Contras Forge New Alliance in Effort to Save Credibility

In an effort to save the credibility of their movement, conservative leaders of the Nicaraguan insurgency have forged a new alliance with rebels based in Costa Rica.

The U.S.-backed contras have agreed on a proposed seven-member directorate that encompasses the moderate Southern Opposition Bloc but that will leave the conservative Nicaraguan Democratic Force in control of the rebel movement. The new directorate, however, apparently would reduce the power of the force’s civilian leader, Adolfo Calero.

Under the agreement hammered out in meetings here this week, the contras will abolish the United Nicaraguan Opposition, an umbrella group formed at the urging of U.S. officials in 1985, and will call themselves the Nicaraguan Resistance.

The Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the largest armed rebel group, will merge with two other small rebel forces to form a single Nicaraguan Resistance Army.

“We represent the opposite option to the government of Nicaragua,” said Alvaro Jerez, director of the Southern Opposition Bloc, known by its Spanish initials BOS. “This will give full legitimacy to our struggle to recover our country.”

The new coalition is the result of at least the third attempt to unite the contra leadership in two years. It is aimed at repairing the political damage in the U.S. Congress and among Nicaraguan exiles caused by the contras’ factional bickering that ended in the resignation of Arturo Cruz from the three-man directorate of the United Nicaraguan Opposition in March.

Cruz, an international banker and a popular figure among liberals in Congress, left the contras in frustration, declaring that Calero and his allies would not share power.

The Reagan Administration is expected to ask Congress for at least $105 million in aid to the contras for fiscal 1988, and debate on the issue could begin late this summer. To have any chance of winning new aid, the contras, it is believed, must improve their image and military record by then.

Behind-Scenes Work

U.S. officials worked behind the scenes day and night to forge the new coalition with the southern bloc, whose leader, Alfredo Cesar, also has a high profile in Congress.

Cesar, Jerez and other contra sources acknowledged that the CIA has held up tens of thousands of dollars in funding for the Costa Rica-based rebels’ political activities since March to pressure them into joining the alliance.

Cesar had refused to join the United Nicaraguan Opposition for the last two years because he felt that it was controlled by Calero and by Enrique Bermudez, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force’s military commander, who was a colonel in Nicaragua’s feared National Guard under dictator Anastasio Somoza before the latter was toppled in 1979.

Cesar said he did not succumb to pressure to join the new coalition and is truly optimistic about the alliance.

“The changes in the structures are good,” Cesar said. “We are satisfied with the agreement. They (the CIA) know that in the past, pressure like that has not worked with us. . . . The resistence we are forming fulfills the characteristics for guaranteeing democracy in Nicaragua.”

Ideological Differences

Other contra officials agreed. “The (Nicaraguan Democratic Force) has opened up to allow others to influence it,” one contra leader said.

It remains to be seen, however, if the ideologically disparate groups will be able to work together. Not only did the Southern Opposition Bloc once reject the conservatives, but members of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force have long viewed the southern contras as “communists” because of their early participation in the Marxist-led Sandinista government, before they became disenchanted.

Under the new agreement, the contras have set up a 54-member assembly that will meet this weekend and that must approve the new directorate. Contra spokesmen said they expect the new directorate to be officially named by Monday.

Contra sources said the proposed directorate agreed on by the leadership would include Calero; Aristides Sanchez, another civilian leader of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force; Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Jr., son of the slain publisher of the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa; Alfonso Robelo, a social democrat and one of the current members of the United Nicaraguan Opposition; Cesar of the Southern Opposition Bloc; a Social Christian Party leader allied internationally with the Christian Democrats, and a representative of Nicaragua’s Miskito Indians.

Calero’s Choice

Chamorro was Calero’s choice to replace him on the directorate of the United Nicaraguan Opposition when Calero stepped down in February in an attempt to keep Cruz from resigning.

Contra sources who asked not to be identified said that the CIA and State Department had tried to curtail control of the new directorate by the Nicaraguan Democratic Force in an attempt to spruce up the contra movement’s image for Congress.

“There was an Administration position in all of this,” one source said. “If Robelo is not on the directorate, then Calero shouldn’t be; and if Calero is on, then Sanchez shouldn’t be. But nobody was listening.”

The contras said that the mood during the current negotiations was far more nationalistic than in the past and that the Americans may have lost some of their political influence over the insurgency because of the Iran-contra scandal and other errors committed by Washington.

“Who mined the Nicaraguan ports, and who suffered because of it?” asked one contra source, referring to the CIA action in 1984 that led to a two-year cutoff in U.S. aid to the rebels. “Who wrote the combatants’ manual (calling for “eliminating” Nicaraguan officials), and who suffered for it? Who decided to sell arms to Iran for a profit to buy arms for the contras, and who apparently is going to suffer for that?”

A Honduras Base

Sanchez’s presence on the directorate, while strengthening the hand of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, would weaken Calero personally, contra sources said. Sanchez, who has been based in Honduras, has worked more closely with the contra troops and with Bermudez, the military commander, than Calero has.

In effect, Sanchez would now replace Calero as representative of the estimated 10,000 to 14,000 troops, most of them FDN fighters.

According to contra sources, U.S. advisers initially felt that Sanchez was potentially so powerful that they opposed his sitting on the directorate. When the Americans finally accepted Sanchez, one source said, “They told him he had to stay away from Honduras,” where the bulk of the troops are based.

Officials of the Southern Opposition Bloc also say they feel that Sanchez is independent of Calero and will not necessarily always side with him when matters come to a vote. They said they are optimistic about being able to form “new alliances.”

“We all know that either there are changes, or we (the contras) disappear,” said southern bloc director Jerez.

Lineup Could Change

U.S. and contra sources said the lineup on the directorate is not firm and could change in the next couple of days before the directorate is approved by the assembly. Robelo, who had threatened to quit the contra leadership earlier this year, has not yet agreed to sit on a new directorate.

Rival Miskito Indian groups also have not been able to agree on a candidate for their post on the directorate.

“It is a puzzle where every piece has to be in place or you don’t have anything,” said a State Department source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

On the military front, the agreement is to establish a three-man military coordinating commission of representatives of the three fronts: the Honduras-based Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the Costa Rica-based bloc and the Atlantic Coast Indians.

But contra sources agree that Bermudez will remain effectively in control of the war and that all his commanders will remain in place. Eventually, they say, he will be made commander of a unified contra army.

‘We Have Experience’

The Indians have about 1,000 fighters, and the Southern Opposition Bloc has about 200, sources close to the contras say.

“The Nicaraguan Democratic Force has been fighting for 6 1/2 years,” said Bermudez. “We have the experience in this war.”

An important point of their agreement, contra officials said, is an agreement that members of the directorate and military commanders in the field may not be members of any provisional government junta that the contras might form nor may they be candidates for president or vice president of any Nicaraguan government that the contras might be part of in the future.