Talks Canceled as Latin Peace Effort Falters

The latest Central American mediation effort collapsed Wednesday when a dispute over political asylum between Costa Rica and Nicaragua blocked a scheduled round of Contadora peace talks.

The Costa Rican government, supported by El Salvador and Honduras, announced in San Jose, the Costa Rican capital, that its representatives will not attend the diplomatic meeting that was due to start today in Panama. Later, the Mexican government announced that the meeting has been canceled.

Diplomats from Mexico, Panama, Venezuela and Colombia--the four countries that constitute the mediating Contadora Group--had already gathered in Panama when the meeting was canceled. They had begun work on a new draft of the verification provision of a proposed treaty aimed at ending conflict in Central America.

The draft treaty is the result of two years of difficult negotiations.

The ostensible source of contention between Nicaragua and Costa Rica is the case of Jose Manuel Urbina Lara, 37, a Nicaraguan who took refuge in the Costa Rican Embassy in Managua last August and fell into the hands of the police in December.

Costa Rica charged Nicaragua with sending security agents into the embassy and arresting Urbina there, a violation of the right of political asylum. The Nicaraguans say they detained the alleged army deserter after he left the embassy voluntarily.

Urbina was tried by a military court and convicted of desertion and is serving a five-year prison term. Costa Rica insists that it will not take part in any peace effort until he is freed or returned to its embassy in Managua.

Real Political Antagonism

However, a Mexican diplomat said Wednesday that the real problem is not the Urbina case but the deepening political antagonism between Costa Rica and Nicaragua that has left both sides unwilling to make concessions.

“The internal political situation is such that each side is losing its ability to maneuver,” the official said.

Costa Rica has grown increasingly hostile to Nicaragua in the last few years as the Sandinista regime in Managua has deepened its leftist and authoritarian tendencies. The Nicaraguans have become equally irritated at Costa Rica’s willingness to act as a host country for anti-Nicaraguan guerrillas and to take sides with Washington in the U.S. dispute with Nicaragua.

A series of secret meetings between diplomatic representatives from the two countries has been held in Panama over the last two weeks under the auspices of the Contadora Group in an unsuccessful attempt to resolve the problem.

Simply Can’t Meet

A statement released by the Mexican Foreign Ministry late Wednesday afternoon said the meeting in Panama could not be held in view of the existing disagreement. “The Contadora Group believes it is necessary to defer the meeting and that more appropriate conditions be found in order to reach a full political understanding over peace and cooperation in Central America,” the statement said.

“The delicate crisis in Central America merits a renewed political effort to concentrate attention on a solution to the problems whose magnitude and gravity cannot go unrecognized,” it went on. It also urged the Central Americans to use “good faith and flexibility” to reach a peace agreement.

Although other Contadora meetings have been canceled, this was the first time that the Central Americans had made a point of refusing to attend on a point of diplomatic principle.

The incident threatened to sabotage the diplomatic effort, begun in January, 1983, when the foreign ministers of the four mediating countries met on the Panamanian island of Contadora to start the search for a peaceful solution.

Participants in the Contadora peace process, aside from the Mexican, Panamanian, Venezuelan and Colombian mediators, have been Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

U.S. Backs Costa Rica

In Washington, Reagan Administration officials said Wednesday that the United States will support the boycott in the Contadora talks by its Central American allies. “We’re sympathetic to the Costa Ricans’ complaints,” a State Department aide said.

Publicly, the Administration has said that it backs the Contadora talks, but officials have recently begun calling the negotiations useless because they have failed to produce major concessions from Nicaragua.

“The Sandinistas are simply using the negotiations to play for time,” a senior Pentagon official charged. “There’s no reason we should play along with that.”

Instead, he said, the United States should step up its military pressure on Nicaragua by renewing aid to the anti-Sandinista rebels, known as contras. The United States broke off direct talks with Nicaragua last month, charging that the Sandinista authorities were not negotiating seriously.