THE SEARCH for moderate solutions to Central America's multiple woes is tricky business, none the easier when the chief protaganists continue to rely on extremist tactics to force maximalist ends. The rhetorical heat rising out of both the United States and Nicaragua of late has only served to obscure the peace-destroying policies of the two adversaries: on the part of the Reagan Administration, bristling militarism, and from the Sandinista regime, increasing political repression. Surprisingly enough, it is in El Salvador, that supposed hotbed of extremism, where the sides are suddenly talking conciliation and understanding. And while the sudden rush to rapprochement between the government of Jose Napoleon Duarte and Salvadoran rebels may eventually do nothing to end peacably the five-year civil war, it at least points the way to the only kind of approach able to lead Central America's political quagmire.

Washington and Managua are probably too myopic to realize it. In Reaganworld, the only threatsto Central America during the President's tenure have been the Cuban and Soviet proxies ready to eat up our allies; these fears have been played up only because of the Administration's single-minded devotion to force and bluster as the lynchpins of its policy in the region. The Republicans brag that under their government "not one square inch" of territory has been lost to the Commies, but if they pursue their current course, they will more likely end up squandering their rapidly diminishing influence in the area.

Already the United States' ostensible friends are edging away from their ally, laden with guns and tanks but little else. In Honduras, where most of the contras fighting the Sandinistas are based, the officers ruling the country profess unease over the U.S. military role there. Meanwhile, Panama has forced the United States to shut down its School of the Americas, training ground for thousands of Latin American soldiers. And in Costa Rica, the fragile democracy is chafing under Washington's efforts to militarize the country, and it refused a recent U.S. request to extend an airstrip near its border with Nicaragua.

WHILE reasons for this chain of events are complex, one common theme has emerged--resentment over the Administration's misguided attempt, through backing of the contras, to topple the Sandinistas. Moreover, deft Nicaraguan diplomacy has left the United States in the unenviable position of refusing a peace treaty--that profered recently by the Contadora group of Colombia, Mexico, Panama, and Venzuela. Rather than budge the Nicaraguan junta, Reagan's policies have succeeded only in winning sympathy for the Sandinistas, no easy trick given the regime's lengthening track-record of repression and economic failure. The current furor over the publication of a CIA manual for political terrorism, assassination, and psychological terror only underscores the moral turpitude of the Reagan Administration, and takes the pressure of the Sandanistas to behave.

The Nicaraguan junta has taken advantage of its freedom to renege on a number of promises it made to nations interested in an end to hostilities. Even erstwhile friends of the Sandinistas are wary of the government's stated intentions to hold truly free elections on November 4 and are wearying of its proclivity to blame all of its considerable economic woes on the United States. Reliable reports from Nicaragua have it that the government is going out of its way to squelch the campaign of the most prominent of its opponents, the disillusioned former junta member Artoro Cruz, and right now there is no reason to expect the janta leader, Daniel Ortega Snavculra, will not be elected president next month in an electoral sham overshadowed only by the angling guerilla war.

When the Sandinlatas suddenly announced last month that they would accept a draft of a non-aggression pact proposed by the Contadora group, Washington was understandably skeptical about their intentions. For at the same time, the government refused to postpone the elections to give the opposition candidates a reasonable shot at office, thus effectively scotching the application in Nicaragua of the Contadora principle of free participation of political parties in the electoral process. Nor, despite Washington's horrible policies towards the country, is there any evidence backing up Ortega's claim--repeated in a Harvard appearance last week--that Washington horrible planning a November military invasion of his country. It is clear that Ortega and his cronics are searching for scapegoats to explain away their inability to lift the Nicaraguan peasantry above the squalor in which they were left by the Somoza regime.

AGAINST the background of this deadlock appears Duarte's big gamble this week, to shuck his past policy and meet with his leftist oppostion. Though, by all accounts, the talks were (in relative terms, at least) a success, Duarte is still in between a rock and a hard place. He is firmly against the concept of power-sharing advanced by the guerrillas; he knows too well the scant success brooked by moderates in sharing rule with Marxist guerillas. But at the same time the guerillas are understandably wary about answering Duarte's call to join elections; they know too well the propensity of the Salvadoran military to shoot up anyone to the left of Roberto D'Aubisson. Even Duarte's meeting with the rebels at La Palma has been met only with the snarls of the death squads, who vow death to those offering a middle way out of El Salvador's problems.

The conflicts engendered by civil war, decades of economic repression of the peasantry, and a heavy U.S. "helping hand" may, in the end, lie beyond moderate solution, but there is nothing else to do but try. Perhaps the other protagonists in the Central America story will take stock of the merits of talking peace, as practiced by Duarte. In Nicaragua, a return to the ideals of the Revolution would immeasurably strengthen its case internationally, which is being bolstered now only by Reagan's propensity to wave a big stick. Delaying the elections and then allowing free campaigning would add something more than lip service to the Sandinista professions of adherence to the Contadora process.

Contadora holds promise for the United States as well. It beckons us away from our propensity to peddle force--unsuccessfully--as the only solution to the many problems of Central America, security and otherwise. Meanwhile, the United States should stick with Duarte in El Salvador and urge perseverence on him in his effort to restrain the extremists in his military. Moderation is in short supply, and unless we wisely use what little is left, we will help condemn the Central American people to decades more of violence, misery, and poverty.