Ortega Offers Concessions if Rebel Aid Is Condemned

President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua said Friday that he will make new concessions under a Central American peace agreement if the four other presidents who signed the accord condemn U.S. aid to guerrillas fighting his government.

Ortega struck a conciliatory note before meeting with the presidents of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in what appeared to be shaping up as a generally acrimonious showdown over the failings of the accord they signed Aug. 7 in Guatemala City.

“We have not come to fight,” Ortega told reporters. “This is not a boxing ring. This is an effort to construct peace.”

The Nicaraguan leader gave no hint of what concessions he is prepared to make at the summit. However, Victor Hugo Tinoco, Ortega’s deputy foreign minister, said that the Sandinista government might consider dropping its objection to direct peace talks with the U.S.-backed Contras.

“It depends on what attitude the five presidents take toward the Reagan Administration,” Tinoco said.

The presidents began meeting at midday Friday and worked late into the night. The outcome of their talks, to be announced today, is likely to have a major influence on a U.S. congressional vote in early February on an Administration request for new aid to the Contras.

The peace accord obliged the five nations who signed it to undertake specific democratic reforms, grant amnesties to political prisoners, lift state-of-siege laws, negotiate cease-fires with insurgent groups and stop aiding guerrillas in neighboring countries. Its first deadline expired in November and was extended into this month.

Arriving here for the summit, Presidents Jose Napoleon Duarte of El Salvador and Jose Azcona Hoyo of Honduras said they intend to focus criticism on Nicaragua’s refusal to grant an amnesty, lift a state of emergency and meet face-to-face with Contra peace negotiators.

Both Duarte and Azcona said they oppose another extension of the timetable to give Ortega more time to comply. Both also refused to take a public stand on Contra aid.

The Salvadoran and Honduran leaders, who are Washington’s closest allies in the region, held a 5 1/2-hour dinner meeting with President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica on Thursday night to press their views. A participant said that Duarte, who did most of the talking, was “passionately furious” with Ortega for “breaking the agreement” and sounded “totally inflexible” in his refusal to stretch the deadline.

Arias, who won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize as the architect of the initiative that led to the accord, was also critical of Nicaragua in remarks to reporters Thursday. Only President Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo of Guatemala did not publicly censure the Marxist-led Sandinista administration.

Ortega’s isolation at the summit was underscored by the manner in which he arrived. Worried about anti-Sandinista demonstrators or possible violence, he changed his plan to fly into San Jose’s airport, as other visiting leaders did. Instead, he took a chartered bus from Managua directly to the summit site, a training center for Central American business executives outside the capital.

Reacting to critical remarks by Duarte, Ortega told reporters that he will advise the Salvadoran leader “to fill himself with the Christian spirit, with the spirit of humility.”

The Nicaraguan leader based his position on an evaluation of the peace accord made by a verification commission of 13 Latin American nations, the United Nations and the Organization of American States. The panel, created by the accord itself, sent its report to the five presidents this week.

The report, drafted with the help of the five Central American foreign ministers, concluded that only Costa Rica had fully complied with the accord but avoided conclusions over which country had complied the least. It urged the presidents to negotiate a new “calendar of compliance” and said that the peace process cannot succeed without a “definitive halt” to U.S. aid to the Contras.

Azcona said Friday that the panel was biased in favor of Nicaragua and had “lost its authority.” He said that the Central Americans should take exclusive authority for monitoring the accord.

Ortega said that the four other presidents should adhere to the report and ignore what he called U.S. pressures to frustrate the summit and kill the peace plan.

“We have all the flexibility in the world as long as the accord is not torn up,” he said.

He said that criticism by Duarte and Azcona “has not created a positive atmosphere” and asserted that the recent killings of leading rights activists in their countries has undermined their positions.

Duarte’s government appears to be in a relatively strong position at the summit. It held direct talks with leftist rebels until the guerrillas broke them off. It also let a state-of-siege law lapse, decreed a general amnesty and let 4,500 refugees, many of them rebel supporters, return to rebel-held areas.

Honduras is more vulnerable to criticism because it has refused to expel Contras from their base camps in its territory. Nicaragua has said it will not end emergency rule or free political prisoners until Honduras complies with the accord’s ban on permitting rebel sanctuaries.