Nicaragua Looks to Latin Meeting for Aid : Hopes Eight Key States Will Denounce U.S. Backing of Contras

This country’s Sandinista government, searching for negotiated relief from its conflicts with the United States, is counting on support from eight democratic Latin American nations whose representatives are meeting today in Colombia.

Nicaraguan officials hope that the conference, which brings together the foreign ministers of the four-nation Contadora Group with those of four other Latin countries that back the Contadora process, will denounce U.S. aid to rightist rebels battling the Sandinista army. An end to U.S. support for the guerrillas is the No. 1 goal of Nicaraguan diplomacy.

The Sandinistas also want Latin backing for Managua’s repeated proposal to resume direct, bilateral U.S.-Nicaraguan peace talks.

“We are looking for a Latin American consensus against military intervention and in favor of negotiations,” Alejandro Bendana, a high official of Nicaragua’s Foreign Ministry, said.

The meeting that starts today in the Colombian port of Cartagena was convened to fortify the faltering peace initiatives sponsored by Mexico, Colombia, Panama and Venezuela--the four Contadora Group countries.

Seeks Regional Pact

The group, working with the five Central American nations of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, has been trying to work out a peace treaty for the region. But 2 1/2 years of effort have so far yielded little fruit.

Today in Cartagena, the foreign ministers of Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay will join the Contadora four as a “support group.”

In effect, eight countries will seek to accomplish what the original four could not: forge a peace agreement between Nicaragua and its neighbors. Among the touchy issues entangling the process are regional arms control, big-power military activity in Central America, cross-border support by one country for rebel movements operating in another and the strengthening of democracy as an institution in each of the five countries.

Among other things, the Contadora nations and their supporters in Cartagena are expected to take up a current point of tension between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Use of Costa Rican territory by anti-Sandinista rebels has resulted in several border incidents, and Nicaragua wants to open bilateral talks with its neighbor over the problem.

Costa Rica Spurns Talks

Costa Rica has rejected negotiations with Nicaragua, insisting instead on a settlement embracing all the Central American countries. Moreover, Costa Rica has so far shown no interest in establishing a demilitarized zone on its border, and because of Nicaraguan military forays across the border into that country, which has no army, anti-Sandinista sentiment in Costa Rica has been growing.

In Managua, diplomatic observers consider the Cartagena gathering to be a minor triumph of Sandinista diplomacy.

In June and July, Nicaraguan Vice President Sergio Ramirez traveled through South America, lobbying new democratic governments there to join the Contadora effort. And while those governments declined to formally join the Contadora Group, Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay offered to take part as a “support group.”

“It’s one thing for the United States to resist Contadora, but another to resist a growing call for peace from more countries in Latin America,” Bendana, the Foreign Ministry official, said in an interview.

A Western diplomat commented, “Contadora was like a patient etherized on the table. The addition of new countries keeps it alive.”

Nicaraguan Walked Out

The Contadora Group’s mediation efforts reached a low point in June during a meeting in Panama with representatives from the five Central American countries. Nicaragua’s representative walked out of the meeting when its neighbors declined to discuss condemnation of U.S. actions viewed by Managua as threatening.

The Sandinistas accuse the United States of blocking Contadora progress by putting pressure on Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras to make endless new demands.

Despite Contadora’s lack of progress so far, diplomats here say the Sandinistas find the talks useful, if only as a forum to lobby against a feared invasion by U.S. forces.

“The Sandinistas look at Contadora as a shield against U.S. moves,” one Western diplomat said.

For his part, Bendana said: “Usually, it is the United States that marshals Latin America to its side. This time, the tables are turned.”