Nicaragua Lifts Property Seizure Law; Opposition Assails Move as Insignificant

President Daniel Ortega on Sunday lifted one of several decrees his government has used to seize private property but said none of the property “now in the hands of the people” will be returned to the former owners.

“It is important to make this clear, because there are those who think the revolution is being negotiated,” he said in a nationally televised speech. “That’s not what is happening. The revolution is not negotiable.”

Stricken from the books was the so-called Law of Absentees, which empowered the government to confiscate property from any Nicaraguan who remained outside the country for more than six months.

Ortega said that by abolishing the law, the government was trying to give Nicaraguan expatriates who still own property in the country a sense of security that might induce them to return.

But opposition leaders dismissed the gesture as insignificant.

‘Confession of a Thief’

“This is the confession of a thief who promises not to steal again but will not return anything he’s already stolen,” said Roger Guevara Mena, a lawyer and secretary of the Nicaraguan Democratic Coordinate.

Since it was decreed in July, 1981, the law has been selectively applied, largely against opponents of the government, to seize farms, businesses and private homes.

Ortega said he nullified the decree in the spirit of an Aug. 7 peace agreement with the presidents of four other Central American nations. Among other things, the accord calls for a cease-fire, a cutoff of U.S. aid to Nicaraguan contras, an amnesty and a restoration of civil liberties here by Nov. 7.

The president also set Oct. 5 for the start of a “national dialogue” called for in the peace accord as a forum for reconciling the government with unarmed opposition groups.

The accord does not specify to whom the amnesty must apply but says it should guarantee property rights as well as life, liberty and personal security.

Promise of Pardons

Sandinista officials have said in recent speeches that they will pardon all contras who turn in their weapons and some, if not all, of the estimated 10,000 people imprisoned on state security charges.

As a first step, Ortega announced pardons for 16 citizens of other Central American countries who are jailed in Nicaragua on charges of aiding the contras.

But opponents of the Sandinistas have pointed to the amnesty clause to demand the return of everything taken by the government in what they call a class struggle against property owners.

One decree imposed after the 1979 overthrow of President Anastasio Somoza legalized the Sandinista seizure of property from his family and supporters. Under a land reform law, the government has taken over the largest estates and some smaller ones deemed to have been abandoned or inefficiently worked. Some prisoners have been dispossessed under a state security law still in force.

These confiscations, affecting more than a fourth of Nicaragua’s cultivated land and hundreds of other properties, are a prime source of political conflict fueling the six-year-old war.

Militants Assured

Ortega and other government leaders have taken pains to assure Sandinista militants and peasants who have benefited from land redistribution that concessions to be made under the peace accord will not erode their gains.

“These lands, these goods that are in the hands of the people will remain in the hands of the people,” the president said Sunday.

Guevera Mena said the Nicaraguan Democratic Coordinate, the main coalition of opposition business, political and labor groups, will use the national dialogue to press for full property restitution and other demands, including early national elections.

The Sandinistas appear willing to open up political discussion in Nicaragua as the price for ending the war under a peace accord viewed as working in their favor.

But Ortega declared Sunday that the agreement cannot take effect if Congress approves the $270 million in new funds the Reagan Administration said it will seek for the contras.