Sandinista Timing Looks Bad--From U.S. View : But Managua Worries More About Its Own Problems Than Outside Opinion

When Sandinista troops raided a training camp for Nicaraguan rebels in Honduras last month, many Americans were surprised--not that the Sandinistas would push into their neighbor’s territory, something that they had done before, but that they would do so on the eve of a U.S. Senate vote on $100 million in aid to the rebels.

Some Americans wondered why the Sandinistas do things that seem to run contrary to their interests.

The same question was posed a year earlier when President Daniel Ortega traveled to Moscow right after Congress defeated a proposal of President Reagan to furnish $14 million in military assistance to the contras, as the rebels are called. Congress soon afterward passed a bill giving the contras $27 million in so-called non-lethal aid.

The question arose again last October when the Sandinistas decreed a controversial state of emergency, limiting civil liberties in this country, just before Ortega traveled to New York to seek support for Nicaragua from the U.N. General Assembly,

Surprised at U.S. Reaction

But while some Americans register surprise at the Sandinistas’ actions and at what seems to be a talent for bad timing, the view from Managua is quite different. The Sandinistas are often surprised at U.S. reaction to their decisions, which they believe are taken for reasons that are obvious.

Like most governments, Nicaragua’s Marxist-led government bases political decisions primarily on internal considerations and not on how its actions will be viewed in the rest of the world, diplomats and Sandinista officials say.

“Nicaragua fundamentally responds to its own problems,” a Foreign Ministry official said. “In a war, you make your calculations, make your decisions, but not fundamentally thinking of how they will be manipulated internationally or you couldn’t do anything at all.”

When Ortega went to the Soviet Union last year, several U.S. congressmen considered the trip a slap in the face of Democrats trying to keep the Administration from overtly supporting the rebels with money. At an earlier time, the Reagan Administration had provided covert financial aid to the contras.

Needed Loans, Markets

Sandinistas and observers say that Ortega visited the Soviet Union--and several Eastern and Western European countries--not to thumb his nose at Congress but because Nicaragua desperately needed loans, food supplies, oil and markets for its exports. It was an economic move made urgent by the guerrilla war in the countryside that absorbs half of the country’s budget and creates discontent among consumers and the families of military conscripts.

Observers here say that the Sandinistas believe Ortega’s Moscow trip was used as an excuse to vote for contras aid by many congressmen whose real reason for voting for the aid was that they did not want to be portrayed as soft on communism.

The Sandinista army’s incursion last month into Honduras was a military decision, responding to the war and not to the U.S. Congress, observers say. While Sandinista officials have not admitted in so many words that their troops entered Honduras, they say the attack on the rebel training camp was aimed at keeping the contras from entering Nicaragua.

“It’s like in boxing,” Angela Saballos, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said. “If your opponent is ready to fall, you’re not going to stop at that moment. You’re going to push him.”

The training camp raid, occurring about three weeks before an expected final vote in the House on the $100-million aid package for the contras, was called an “invasion” by U.S. officials in Washington, who said that 1,500 Sandinista troops violated Honduran sovereignty. Later accounts stressed that the attack was aimed at the contras and had not involved Honduran troops. It also came out that many similar, although smaller-scale, clashes had taken place previously in Honduras that were not made into an issue by the Honduran and U.S. governments.

“The Sandinistas want (contras commander Enrique) Bermudez to have to defend his bases in Honduras. They can’t be in a guaranteed sanctuary,” a Western diplomat said about the raid.

Observers still are uncertain how many Sandinista troops took part in the attack, about 10 miles inside of Honduras, or why the Sandinistas chose to launch the attack when they did. Some say they believe Managua had information that the contras were planning an attack of their own.

Because of congressional maneuvering, a House vote last week postponed final action on the $100-million aid issue. The Sandinistas point to that as an example of why they cannot wage the war at the pace of the U.S. Congress.

“A war is dynamic. We can’t just sit and wait with our arms crossed,” Saballos said.

The Sandinistas say they cannot always predict what will become an issue in the United States, but they believe anything they do is potential fodder for the Reagan Administration, which they accuse of having propagandists lying in wait to magnify the slightest Sandinista blunder.

“How can we avoid the propaganda machine against Nicaragua? No matter what we do, it’s always the same,” Saballos said. At the same time, she said, the Nicaraguans do not have the skills or resources to manipulate U.S. public opinion effectively.

Diplomats agree, noting that the Sandinistas sometimes botch their public relations even when internal interests are not at stake. This month, for example, another of the many meetings of Latin American foreign ministers seeking a peace agreement in Central America ended with no progress.

Although none of the participants’ positions had changed from the time of earlier failures, Nicaragua was blamed by its Central American neighbors for the collapse of the meeting.

“They (the Nicaraguans) should have done their background better, done better press relations,” a Western diplomat said. “All of the other countries got into the game first.”

Sometimes the Sandinistas are surprised when their activities do not make headlines abroad. Although Ortega’s trip to the Soviet Union was big news in the United States last year, this year it was not an issue when, amid U.S. public debate and congressional votes on contras aid, Ortega vacationed in Cuba and later attended the 3rd Congress of the Cuban Communist Party.

Protocol and Nicaragua’s dependence on Cuba for support made Ortega’s attendance at the congress necessary. Cuban President Fidel Castro has attended similarly important events in Nicaragua, such as the first anniversary of the Sandinista revolution.

The Sandinistas’ efforts to lobby the U.S. Congress were far greater last year, when Congress was considering overt aid to the contras for the first time, than it was this year, when the issue was whether to expand the aid to include weapons and military training. Nicaraguan officials seem to have believed all along that the contras would get this round of aid and that it was only a matter of how much and with what restrictions.

They also believe that Reagan is “obsessed” with Nicaragua, as one official put it, and determined to get rid of the Sandinista government and that he is gradually bringing Congress around to his point of view. The Sandinistas therefore believe that they must concentrate on fighting the war. Their priority is security.

Emergency Decree

The need to fight the war was behind the Sandinistas’ state-of-emergency proclamation last October, a measure legalizing restrictions on civil liberties. The move, condemned even by many of the Sandinistas’ European supporters, was taken because of the Sandinistas’ perception of their internal situation.

“The idea of the emergency law was to deal a blow that would inhibit (the development of) an internal front of the contras,” Saballos said. “This is not a halfway war.”

The decree suspended many civil guarantees, including the right to be taken before judicial authorities within 24 hours of arrest, the right to a speedy and public trial, and freedom from search without a warrant. It allowed the government to restrict freedoms of the press, assembly and the right to strike. The law suspends habeas corpus in crimes “against state security and public order.”

While it might have been better for the Sandinistas’ international image to have imposed the restrictions more quietly, their announcement of the emergency law was meant to make noise at home, diplomats say.

“If you are afraid of the creation of an internal front and want to warn people off, you don’t do it by arresting people secretly in the night. You want to be seen as saying something,” a Western diplomat said.