Costa Rican Plan for Peace Gains Notice in Region

A Costa Rican peace plan for Central America is receiving increasingly serious attention in the region as Nicaraguan rebels step up their war.

Diplomatic activity, along with the fighting in Nicaragua, has quickened since the plan became public two months ago. It is the focus of a scheduled summit of all five Central American presidents that is certain to influence the coming congressional debate over $105 million in new U.S. aid to the contras.

No Quick Fix

But, so far, reactions to the peace proposal have emphasized the gulf between Nicaragua and its four neighbors as well as differences among the four, which are allied to varying degrees with the United States. As a result, the plan faces complex negotiations that are unlikely to produce a quick settlement, according to U.S. and Central American officials.

The 10-point proposal by President Oscar Arias Sanchez applies to fighting in two of the four nations, El Salvador and Guatemala, but is aimed primarily at ending the five-year-old Nicaraguan war. The other neighbors are Costa Rica and Honduras.

It calls for immediate cease-fires in the three guerrilla conflicts and a cutoff of outside aid to insurgent forces, followed by amnesties for rebels and talks between the governments and their unarmed opponents. Any Central American country would be barred from letting insurgents use its territory to attack another.

Countries signing the plan would agree to practice “total political pluralism,” respect human rights and consent to international monitoring of future elections. Complete freedom of press and assembly would have to be permitted within 60 days of signing.

The U.S. Senate endorsed the plan last month by a 97-1 vote. But the Reagan Administration has raised objections, saying the plan would halt the military pressure needed to prod Nicaragua’s Sandinista leaders to make democratic reforms.

“That means our only important card gets thrown away first, while the Sandinistas get to keep most of their cards,” a State Department official said.

Interviews with three presidents and other officials in four Central American countries indicate that the June 25-26 summit at Esquipulas, Guatemala, will be dominated by two issues.

Contras’ Role at Issue

One is how to achieve a cease-fire. Honduras and El Salvador, the closest U.S. allies, insist that the contras must be involved directly or indirectly in negotiations on that point. Nicaragua refuses to talk to the contras, and Costa Rica would exclude armed groups from any talks.

Some Salvadoran and Guatemalan officials, particularly in the military, are reportedly opposed to cease-fires and amnesties in their own guerrilla wars.

The other issue is how to define “political pluralism.” The Sandinistas claim to practice their own brand of democracy and reject outside supervision. Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras say the Sandinistas’ Marxist-led, one-party rule is the main cause of the war and a threat to regional peace.

“The peace plan obviously cannot work if the United States continues to finance the war,” Costa Rica’s foreign minister, Rodrigo Madrigal Nieto, said. “But the United States is not the only possible obstacle. Perhaps Nicaragua will have no interest in signing. Guatemala or El Salvador or Honduras could be a stumbling block. The negotiations will be difficult and complicated.”

Reasserting Neutrality

The plan grew from Arias’ belief that military pressure has only hardened the Sandinistas’ authoritarian ways. He is also determined to reassert Costa Rica’s neutrality and draw his neighbors into a more direct role in peace efforts.

His year-old government has arrested contra commanders, closed contra bases and shut down a secret airstrip built under U.S. supervision for contra supply flights into Nicaragua.

Arias announced the plan after the Contadora Group of four Latin American nations that has been trying since 1983 to settle Central American conflicts through diplomatic mediation declared in January that its own most recent initiative in the four-year effort was a failure. That initiative included the active collaboration of four South American nations joined together in a Contadora support group and of Javier Perez de Cuellar, secretary general of the United Nations.

In an interview, Arias said that his plan goes beyond the Contadora Group’s proposals by fixing a specific timetable for democratic reforms.

As the region’s most durable democracy, he said, Costa Rica has “moral authority” to demand such changes in other countries.

Calls Democracy Essential

“There can be no peace without democracy,” he insisted.

Amid growing doubts that the Reagan Administration can obtain congressional approval for new funding for the contras, the Arias plan has become a rallying point for those in Washington and Central America who believe that it is time for a diplomatic settlement.

“For years the United States has been arm-twisting our neighbors to reject negotiations and let the contras use their territory,” Nicaraguan Vice President Sergio Ramirez said. “Now things have changed. They are tired of this policy.”

A Western diplomat here offered a different explanation: “Nicaragua’s neighbors are worried that if the Iran arms scandal produces a cessation of contra aid and nothing else happens, then the Sandinistas will become more of a threat to them.”

The plan was unveiled here at a Feb. 14 meeting of the presidents of all Central American countries except Nicaragua. Their exclusion led the Sandinistas to criticize the plan in advance as an American-backed plot to isolate them.

Ortega Agreed to Attend

Later, when he realized that the plan would cut off aid to the contras without forcing direct negotiations with contra leaders, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega called it worthy of discussion and agreed to attend the scheduled summit in Guatemala.

In the flurry of recent diplomatic preparations, President Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo of Guatemala visited Managua, and Costa Rica sent its first ambassador there after a yearlong interval. Nicaragua hinted that it may drop a suit against Costa Rica in the World Court for letting contras use Costa Rican territory.

Nicaragua has refrained from commenting on details of the Costa Rican plan, while insisting that the summit remain open to other proposals.

Many officials believe Costa Rica’s cease-fire proposal will undergo substantial change. It does not now specify how any cease-fire is to come about.

Want Rebels Present

El Salvador and Honduras, deeply involved in the process of supplying U.S. aid to the contras, have echoed Washington’s insistence that rebel leaders have a role in cease-fire talks. El Salvador’s administration has held two rounds of unsuccessful peace negotiations with leftist guerrillas fighting in that country.

“We see the cease-fire not as something that will be handed down from the Holy Spirit, but as something that has to come from dialogue,” Ricardo Acevedo Peralta, the Salvadoran foreign minister, said.

“I cannot sign a cease-fire for the contras,” President Jose Azcona Hoyo of Honduras said. “They have not given me that power. A cease-fire has to be signed by those who are doing the firing.”

Adolfo Calero, chief of the largest Nicaraguan rebel force, said that cease-fire talks would have to determine where each side’s troops are, where they can move and how they are to be fed.

Open to Changes in Plan

Arias says he is open to “possible modifications” in his plan to define the mechanics of a cease-fire. But Costa Rica opposes using cease-fire negotiations to press Nicaragua for political concessions.

“We want a cease-fire first,” Madrigal said. “That would take away the Sandinistas’ pretext for censoring the press and denying civil liberties. It would put them morally in the corner.”

Dismissing the contras as a mercenary force, Nicaragua has long insisted on negotiating directly with the United States to end the fighting.

Nicaragua says it wants such “security” issues to be the focus of the forthcoming summit rather than the internal reforms demanded by Costa Rica.

To comply with these clauses, the Sandinistas would have to lift a state of emergency that restricts civil liberties. Ortega said recently that could happen only “if the Reagan Administration stops its war of aggression against the people of Nicaragua.”

Oppose Election Monitors

The Sandinistas also reject the presence of official foreign election monitors.

The Sandinista National Liberation Front came to power 1979 in the vanguard of a popular uprising that toppled President Anastasio Somoza. In 1984, the front won national elections that were boycotted as unfair by a large part of the opposition.

The Costa Rican plan does not call for Nicaraguan elections before they are next scheduled, in 1990, but Honduras wants the plan changed to require them sooner.

In separate interviews, Presidents Azcona of Honduras and Jose Napoleon Duarte of El Salvador were particularly blunt in characterizing the Sandinistas as Marxist, totalitarian and dictatorial.

“Under a pluralist system, they cannot be the Sandinista front, the government, the army, the legislative power and everything else,” Azcona said. “The only Central American problem is this: the democratization of Nicaragua. If this is achieved, the contras have no reason to exist.”

Demands Internal Changes

Duarte, who is fighting guerrillas that have been backed by Nicaragua, said that the only way to achieve regional peace is by forcing the Sandinistas to make internal changes.

“Does there exist in the world one single example of a Marxist regime that is not expansionist?” he asked.

Although Guatemala has refrained from open criticism of the Sandinistas’ internal politics, President Cerezo urged Ortega privately during his visit to meet with internal opposition leaders.

Replying at a news conference at the time, Ortega said: “We understand democracy as the participation of the people. We have our own peculiarities, our own complexities, and in accordance with them, well, we are constructing a democracy.”

Congress Approved Aid

Such differences are exactly what frustrated the last five-nation summit, also held in Esquipulas, last May, when a Contadora proposal was on the table.

A month later, Congress voted $100 million in U.S. aid to the contras, and the Sandinistas replied by cracking down harder on their internal critics.

Whether the new peace initiative can change this climate is open to doubt.

Since it was offered, President Reagan has sent Philip C. Habib, his special envoy, to exchange ideas in Central America about the Costa Rican plan and prospects for U.S. involvement in a peace settlement.

Nicaraguan leaders say they suspect that Habib’s real purpose is only to appear to seek peace so that the Administration can coax more contra aid out of Congress. Even some U.S. diplomats wonder if Habib has authority to negotiate a settlement.

There are similar questions about the Sandinistas’ eagerness to negotiate. Nicaraguan officials sound confident that they can contain the growing contra offensive and ride out the end of Reagan’s term. No Central American leader is predicting a major breakthrough at the summit.

Times staff writers Frank del Olmo, Marjorie Miller and Doyle McManus contributed to this article.