Managua Sees U.S. Bid to Sabotage Peace Talks

The Managua government accused the Reagan Administration on Sunday of trying to sabotage peace talks between the Sandinista regime and U.S.-backed Contras by creating a “situation of crisis and war in Central America.”

But the cease-fire negotiations will go on today as scheduled in the southern Nicaraguan town of Sapoa, said Victor Hugo Tinoco, vice minister of foreign affairs and a negotiator in the talks.

He told a press conference that Washington rushed more than 3,000 troops to neighboring Honduras last week and encouraged Honduran air strikes inside Nicaragua as part of what he called an American plan to disrupt the negotiations. The Sandinistas contend that the Reagan Administration’s goal is the destruction of their leftist revolution.

“Despite the plan of the Administration to create a situation of crisis and war in Central America,” Tinoco said, “they will not succeed in stopping the talks. The talks are going to occur tomorrow in Sapoa.”

Up to 2,000 Nicaraguan army troops were reported to have entered Honduran territory last week in pursuit of Contra forces driven across the border by a major Sandinista offensive. In tough responses, the Reagan Administration airlifted four U.S. Army battalions to Honduras for military exercises, and Honduran warplanes flew bombing sorties over the border Thursday and Saturday.

Offensive Over

Tinoco did not acknowledge that Nicaraguan troops had crossed into Honduras, but he said the troops “are now in Nicaraguan territory” and that the Sandinista offensive has ended.

“Of course, the (Reagan) Administration is trying to continue with the effort to create a war environment, a crisis climate,” he added. “And that is why they are pushing, for example, the Honduran government to launch those air raids against Nicaraguan positions, well inside Nicaraguan territory.”

He said the U.S. action has backfired by showing that the Contras are not an independent movement but a tool of foreign intervention.

“It is more clear now that they are a proxy army,” he said.

For years, that was the reason the Sandinistas gave for refusing to talk to the Contras. The policy on negotiations changed after President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and four other Central American leaders signed an agreement in August that outlined steps for resolving the region’s civil wars.

The talks scheduled to start today will be the first between the Sandinistas and the Contras without a mediator.