U.S. and Nicaragua--Belligerents Maintain Full Diplomatic Relations

When the Yankees come, Don Canuto tells Dona Cayetana, the Nicaraguan people must meet them with rifles, machetes, ice picks, knives and axes.

“We’ll even throw boiling water on them,” says Dona Cayetana, a grandmotherly cartoon character in an official Nicaraguan civil defense booklet.

“Right, we’ll have to use everything to fight those Yankee sons of . . . ,” says Don Canuto.

It is the rhetoric of war: Nicaraguan patriots versus Yankee aggressors. And the Nicaraguan authorities believe that the rhetoric is justified because of U.S. support for the contras, the rebels who are waging guerrilla war on the leftist Sandinista government.

But along with the hostility in U.S.-Nicaraguan relations, there is an incongruous element of civility. While the two governments are at each other’s throats, they continue to observe the niceties of full diplomatic ties.

And the Yankees, in fact, are already here; they go peacefully about their official business at the sprawling U.S. Embassy on a shady avenue at the edge of Managua.

Embassy personnel and their families face no unusual security risks--no kidnapings or car bombs. The only notable activities directed against the embassy are periodic demonstrations outside its iron fence by pro-Sandinista Americans living or visiting here.

About 50 U.S. citizens work at the embassy. After Cuba and the Soviet Union, the United States has the largest diplomatic mission in Managua.

The Reagan Administration and the Sandinista government each has its special reasons for maintaining diplomatic relations despite their mutual hostility.

Arguments for breaking relations gained strength within the Reagan Administration last April, after Congress voted down an Administration proposal for new military aid to the contras. Some congressmen said they opposed the aid because it did not make sense to support a war against the Sandinistas while maintaining diplomatic relations.

For a while, it appeared that the Administration might have to cut the diplomatic ties to win passage of a contra aid bill. “We thought between April and June that we would lose the embassy,” a diplomat here said.

Softening Aid Bill

But the Administration instead softened the contra aid proposal to provide only for “humanitarian assistance” such as clothing and medicine. In June, Congress approved $27 million in non-military aid, and the threat to diplomatic relations evaporated.

“They have stopped talking about breaking relations,” the diplomat said.

Because the Administration hopes to renew the contra aid in early 1986, it continues to tailor the trappings of its Nicaragua policy to suit wavering congressmen. To those who fear voter criticism for supporting a militaristic policy, the continuing diplomatic ties can be offered as proof that the policy is more than just support for the rebels.

Diplomatic relations also are useful for fending off congressional demands that the United States resume a series of U.S.-Nicaraguan talks that were held last year in the Mexican resort of Manzanillo. As long as regular diplomatic channels are open, the Administration contends, the Manzanillo talks are not necessary.

The Sandinistas wanted the Manzanillo talks broadened in ways the Administration disapproved of, U.S. officials here say, so in January the United States suspended the talks.

Contadora Process

The Reagan Administration saw the talks as an adjunct to the wider Central American peace negotiations by the Contadora Group, named after the Panamanian island where it was formed. The Contadora process involves Nicaragua and several other Latin American countries but not the United States.

In the U.S. view, Nicaragua wanted the Manzanillo talks to take center stage, with Washington and Managua as the main actors, leaving the Contadora talks as a sideshow.

“The Sandinistas wanted a highly visible, bilateral process leading to a settlement,” a State Department official said in Washington. “This was difficult for the United States because its Central American allies were nervous about a separate U.S.-Sandinista deal.”

‘Normalize Relations’

Alejandro Bendana, a high official in the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry, said Nicaragua’s goal at Manzanillo was “to normalize relations between Nicaragua and the United States.”

For Nicaragua, Bendana said in an interview, the key problem of Central America is the U.S. military presence in the region. The United States has advisers in El Salvador and Costa Rica and conducts maneuvers and maintains bases in Honduras.

“Those are manifestations in Central America of a U.S. policy,” Bendana said. “So, it is better to go to the source of the problem. . . . We don’t feel threatened by Costa Rica, Honduras or El Salvador. We feel threatened by the United States.”

But the United States does not want direct negotiations with the Sandinistas, he said. “The United States is not prepared to talk with an independent Nicaragua,” he said. “The goal of the United States is to overthrow the government of Nicaragua.”

That will take more than aid to the contras, Bendana said.

‘U.S. Must Face Reality’

“The United States must face reality,” he said. “The counterrevolution has not worked, it does not work and it will not work as an instrument for overthrowing this government.”

Therefore, he added, the United States’ only choices are direct military intervention in Nicaragua or a negotiated settlement with the Sandinista government.

The government believes that U.S. public opinion and congressional pressure can influence the Administration against direct military intervention. And diplomatic relations with the United States give Nicaragua important channels of communication with the American public and Congress, Bendana said.

“It is in our interest to maintain all possible avenues for carrying on a direct dialogue with all sectors that will listen to us in the United States,” he said. “We believe firmly that reason will prevail in the United States, and we must work patiently until it is recognized that Nicaragua is not a threat.”

Steady Stream of Visitors

The Nicaraguan government has helped organize a steady stream of American visitors who come to “see for themselves” whether the Sandinistas are dangerous Communists, as the Reagan Administration contends. And the Nicaraguan Embassy in Washington is active in public relations and lobbying.

Without diplomatic relations, such Nicaraguan efforts to influence U.S. public opinion would be more difficult. Bendana said the Administration wants to “curtail that type of communication” but does not want to sacrifice its embassy in Managua.

“They don’t want to close the embassy here because they would lose a whole system of espionage,” he said. Switching from Spanish to English, he added, “They know when every toilet flushes in Managua.”

He accused the U.S. Embassy of secret machinations involving Nicaraguan opposition organizations and even some Nicaraguan government employees.

“There is an active policy by the embassy here of trying to buy off, to bribe, public officials to get information from them,” he said.

The embassy would make no response to the accusations. U.S. Ambassador Harry Bergold, a career diplomat, said he would decline to comment because of the sensitive and complicated nature of U.S.-Nicaraguan relations.