Latin Peace Pact Revised, Call for New Talks Issued

The foreign ministers of the Contadora countries said Wednesday that they have drawn up revisions to a proposed Central American peace treaty in the hope that this will pave the way for an end to regional hostilities.

The diplomats called for another round of talks with regional leaders Feb. 14-15 “to prepare the elements for a conference destined to subscribe to the Act of Peace and Cooperation in Central America.”

The declaration, issued at the end of two days of closed-door discussions, came as something of a surprise because for the first time it referred, albeit tentatively, to a signing ceremony.

The “Act of Peace and Cooperation in Central America” is the name of the draft peace plan produced in a difficult series of negotiations that began on Jan. 10, 1982, on the Panamanian resort island of Contadora.

The island gave its name to the group of mediating nations--Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela. These nations worked out the plan in consultation with the five affected Central American countries--Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

The Contadora diplomats acknowledged that “divergent positions which are unresolved” still exist between Nicaragua and the U.S. allies in Central America, but they insisted that none of these are insurmountable.

“We will make proposals which we hope will be received sympathetically and accepted by the governments of Central America,” Foreign Minister Bernardo Sepulveda of Mexico said at a brief news conference.

Isidro Morales Paul, the foreign minister of Venezuela, added, “We have managed in this meeting to crystallize a series of proposals with the aim of bringing all the parties closer together.”

He cautioned that “our optimism must not be exaggerated,” but he said the group hopes its suggestions will work because they are the result of a series of private talks that the foreign ministers have held separately with the foreign ministers of Central America over the past three months.

The differences among the Central American nations are so pronounced that the principal U.S. allies in the region--El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica--produced an alternative draft of the peace plan last Oct. 19 and submitted it as a new basis for negotiation.

But Nicaragua, which had endorsed the original plan drafted by the Contadora Group in September, balked at renegotiating on the basis of the new version. Thus, the talks appeared stalemated.

The main disagreements focus on some of the principal security provisions: the presence of foreign military advisers in the region and the holding of military maneuvers by foreign armies; the composition and authority of a panel that would monitor compliance; the level of armaments that each nation would be allowed to possess, and the timetable for putting the provisions into effect.

The Contadora foreign ministers left Wednesday afternoon on a Panamanian air force plane for Nicaragua, where they will attend today’s presidential inauguration of Daniel Ortega and discuss the proposed changes in the peace treaty with him.

The new revisions will be circulated to all the involved governments in the coming days, according to the Contadora negotiators, in the hope that this will lay the groundwork for a productive meeting in February.

The joint declaration issued Wednesday contained the Contadora Group’s first explicit reference to the United States, whose support, the diplomats acknowledge privately, is necessary if a workable peace document is to emerge.

The declaration calls upon the United States and Nicaragua to continue the series of talks they began last summer, and to “intensify” them “with the aim of reaching agreements that favor the normalization of their relations and regional detente.”

U.S. diplomats have privately voiced concern that the original Contadora peace draft was too favorable to Nicaragua--for instance, doing away with the military maneuvers that have maintained a U.S. military presence in Honduras and applied pressure against Nicaragua. The alternative document produced by the U.S. allies essentially eliminated this provision.

It is difficult to see how the Contadora negotiators can reconcile the positions of the U.S. allies and of Nicaragua, but a diplomat from one of the Contadora countries, speaking on the understanding that he not be identified, maintained that the differences are not irreconcilable.

He said that if the United States intended to invade or otherwise place direct military pressure on Nicaragua--or any other Central American country--it would not need Honduras as a staging area because of overwhelming U.S. military might. Thus, he said, the question of permitting the United States to hold military maneuvers in Honduras should not be of overriding importance to either side and can probably be resolved.