Ortega Blames Variety of Foes for New Curbs

President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua said Sunday that his government has won its fight against U.S.-backed guerrillas but that internal subversion fomented by the CIA, by anti-Sandinista Nicaraguan leftists and by “political” priests had forced him to suppress civil liberties last week.

At a news conference in his New York hotel suite, Ortega said that rebels backed by the Reagan Administration, known as contras, have “lost the ability to sustain an offensive” and have been driven out of the country on all fronts.

“The only way the contras could get back inside would be if they were accompanied by Honduran or U.S. troops,” the Nicaraguan leader said. “Their morale is destroyed, and no matter how many guns are supplied, there will be less and less people to pick them up. Reagan’s strategy has collapsed, and even an air shuttle between Washington and Tegucigalpa (the Honduran capital) wouldn’t make any difference.”

World Opinion Negative

Ortega conceded that the decision to install emergency rule was costly in terms of world public opinion. But he said that world opinion has been unable to end the contras’ war against his government and asserted that even the opposition of the U.S. Congress had failed to halt Administration military support for the contras.

His main problem today, he said, is a declining economic situation in which thousands of conscripts are returning from two-year military service and must be replaced by new draftees.

Ortega added that “subversives” inspired by the CIA, the Nicaraguan Communist and Socialist parties and “confrontational” clergy are seeking to exploit the situation by encouraging strikes and resistance to the draft.

He said he plans to attend a Wednesday reception, to be hosted by Reagan, for chiefs of state or government attending the 40th-anniversary celebrations of the United Nations. Ortega will lead the list of speakers today in the opening of a special, weeklong session of the General Assembly.