Unity Eludes Nicaraguan Rebels as Talks Fizzle

Rightist Nicaraguan rebels, hoping to attract more international support and get new U.S. financing for their war against Managua’s Sandinista government, are renewing efforts to forge a broad political front with other anti-Communist leaders.

Unity, however, remains elusive. On Sunday, a gathering in Miami billed as a meeting to forge a common front attracted only two rebel leaders.

A surprise absentee was the top leader of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, Adolfo Calero, who said later that he was too busy working for unity to attend the meeting.

“I can’t do everything at once,” Calero said.

The rebel leaders are expected to meet soon in San Jose, Costa Rica, to try to hammer out a document outlining a common purpose. They face problems, however.

The Honduras-based Democratic Force, the largest rebel group, is trying to win the support of anti-Sandinista leaders who in the past have rejected their rightist leadership. So far, attempts to bring two important holdouts--Arturo Cruz, a banker and moderate Nicaraguan politician, and Eden Pastora, a volatile former Sandinista military leader--into a rebel umbrella organization have been unsuccessful.

Cruz, who once served the Sandinista regime as its ambassador to the United States, believes that he carries more clout acting alone. Pastora opposes some of the Democratic Force’s leaders, including those who were officers in the Nicaraguan National Guard under Anastasio Somoza, the strongman deposed by the Sandinista revolution in 1979.

Still, the rebels and their supporters in the Reagan Administration believe that a broad alliance will help persuade Congress to restore aid that was cut off last year.

The Democratic Force, whose members are commonly referred to as contras (for counterrevolutionaries), is reported to number 12,000 combatants. Until Congress canceled such assistance in mid-1984, the force got most of its aid through the CIA.

Now its leaders estimate that they spend $600,000 a month for supplies and munitions. The money has come from unspecified sources, some of them believed to be private contributors.

The force’s present alliance includes insurgent Nicaraguan Indian groups and breakaway rebels who formerly fought with Pastora from bases in Costa Rica.

Cruz has flirted with the contras but stopped short of formally joining them. Last month, he urged Congress to continue funding them.

“It would be a terrible political mistake to withdraw aid,” Cruz said. “For any solution to be feasible, it is essential to discuss matters from a position of strength.”

A big stumbling block to unity has been the continued presence in the Nicaraguan Democratic Force of such former National Guard leaders as the top contra military chief, Enrique Bermudez, a former Guard colonel.

Pastora calls the former Somoza officers “genocidal.” As the flamboyant “Commander Zero,” Pastora commanded Sandinista guerrillas fighting against the National Guard in the south of Nicaragua. He split with the Sandinistas over their sharp turn to the left and now leads a dwindling guerrilla band.

Attempts to unify anti-Sandinista groups have failed in the past. Last August, some members of Pastora’s group, the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance, joined the Democratic Force, but since then some of them have expressed disappointment with the merger.

The Democratic Force, they say, bullies the smaller factions and gets the lion’s share of military aid.

“We would like a more equal share of the resources,” said Fernando Chamorro, a Pastora ally who joined the larger group.

Chamorro and Miskito Indian leader Steadman Fagoth attended Sunday’s meeting in Miami, which was sponsored by the Council for Inter-American Security. The council, a rightist organization, plans to lobby in Congress for continued aid to the contras.

Chamorro said the contras hope to build a unified political leadership, leaving the question of military leadership aside for the time being. He worries, though, that attempts to remove Bermudez and other former Nicaraguan National Guard officers from the contra leadership are doomed.

“He (Bermudez)has very strong backing among right-wing elements in the Reagan Administration,” Chamorro said.