Shultz and Ortega Hold Cool Meeting : But Both Leaders Express Support for Resumption of Contadora Peace Talks

The United States and Nicaragua exchanged fresh broadsides here Saturday, but amid them came hopes that the cumbersome regional search for Central American peace will be resumed.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega met and talked for an hour before breakfast without narrowing the differences between them.

At a press conference afterward, Shultz reaffirmed the Reagan Administration’s hard line against Nicaragua, at one point calling the Sandinista regime “deplorable.”

Exchange of Ideas

The secretary said that at his meeting with Ortega, the Sandinista leader “ . . . reiterated points he has stated publicly, and I stated again the objectives the United States and its allies in Central America have indicated for several years.”

Later, Ortega told a separate press conference that he asked Shultz to resume, as a complement to regional peace efforts, the bilateral talks conducted by diplomatic representatives of the two countries in Manzanillo, Mexico, during the second half of 1984.

“Instead of looking for military solutions, we say to the U.S., ‘Let’s look for specific solutions.’ There are conditions to allow the Manzanillo talks to resume, but the U.S. position is closed,” Ortega said.

Shultz called for prompt resumption of the regional Contadora process through which the four-nation Contadora Group--Mexico, Colombia, Panama and Venezuela--has mediated for two years in an effort to get the five Central American nations to settle their differences with a peace treaty.

Ortega also expressed support for the efforts of the Contadora Group, but he had grave reservations about the American commitment to the peace process.

“The United States has displayed no willingness to make the talks work--all to the contrary,” the Nicaraguan leader asserted.

For his part, Shultz said the resolution of a dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica involving a Nicaraguan youth arrested by Sandinista police after seeking refuge in Costa Rica’s embassy in Managua “perhaps will help Contadora.”

A Contadora meeting scheduled for Feb. 14 to discuss a draft peace treaty was canceled after Costa Rica, backed by other U.S. allies in Central America, refused to take part as long as the youth, Jose Urbina Lara, remained in jail.

‘Removed the Pretext’

Last week, the Sandinistas agreed to release him--”We have removed the pretext for halting Contadora,” Ortega said Saturday--and diplomatic sources here said the youth will be flown to Bogota, Colombia, on Wednesday.

Central American diplomats who came to Uruguay, along with Shultz and Ortega, for Friday’s inauguration of civilian President Julio Sanguinetti said they expect a fresh round of Contadora talks soon. Colombian President Belisario Betancur told Uruguayan reporters that a new Contadora meeting is “imminent.”

Shultz said that at his meeting with Ortega, he reiterated longstanding U.S. demands that the Sandinistas oust their Cuban and Soviet military advisers, that they scale down their armed forces, that they end their support for insurgencies elsewhere in Latin America and that they observe their promises for internal democratization.

“I don’t know that anything has changed,” Shultz said after meeting Ortega, “except perhaps the recognition all around that the center of negotiations must be the Contadora process and that the sooner we get back, the better.

“We support Contadora. We hope discussions resume, and we hope they develop a worthwhile and constructive outcome. For that to happen, they must address the concerns of the Central American countries which feel threatened by Nicaraguan armaments and subversion.”

No Reluctance for Talks

Shultz said the United States would have “no reluctance” to resume bilateral talks with Nicaragua in Manzanillo, but he insisted that “Contadora has the capacity to solve the problem,” and added, “We believe the next step should be in that context.”

American and Nicaraguan diplomats met privately nine times in Manzanillo without results. Last January, the United States suspended the talks, saying it would refuse to negotiate further unless the Sandinista regime made more concessions in the Contadora peace process. Nicaragua, while supporting the Contadora process, also seeks a separate understanding with the United States as part of a Central American move toward peace.

Ortega said repeated Nicaraguan peace initiatives “have fallen on deaf ears in the United States.” U.S. attempts to impose conditions on Nicaragua, he said, “are the typical position of those who are used to running Central America--a position of yanquis accustomed to sending troops to occupy us.”

At his press conference, which he held before flying to San Juan, Puerto Rico, Shultz did not mask his scorn for the Sandinistas, saying Nicaraguan citizens cannot be counted among the Latin Americans benefiting from the current trend in the region toward democratic governments because the recent election there “was not democratic.”

He dismissed as “raising more questions than it answered” an Ortega proposal last week to send home 100 Cuban advisers by the end of the year and not acquire any new arms systems. Ortega’s proposal was seen as an obvious attempt to influence U.S. congressional consideration of President Reagan’s request for $14 million to support anti-Sandinista rebels, known as contras.

“How many Cubans are there in Nicaragua?” Shultz asked rhetorically. “If 100 leave by the end of 1985, at that rate it would be by the middle of the next century before they all leave.”

2,500 Military Advisers

The United States has estimated that about 2,500 Cuban and Soviet military advisers are currently in Nicaragua, training armed forces that the United States insists far exceed Nicaragua’s defense requirements. In all, about 10,000 Cubans are stationed in Nicaragua, including teachers and medical personnel, U.S. officials say.

Ortega called the U.S. estimates “a lie, as the American intelligence services know perfectly well,” and he added: “There are fewer than 800 Cuban military advisers, and if the technical, medical and educational advisers are added to them, the total is less than 1,500. The Americans add a zero.”

While Shultz’s questioners focused on Nicaragua on Saturday, the secretary himself several times stressed American admiration for Uruguay’s peaceful transition to democracy after a 12-year military dictatorship. He pledged that the United States will “work together” with Sanguinetti, who he said has accepted an invitation from Reagan for a state visit to the United States in the last half of this year.