Nicaragua Foes Meet, Call Truce : Temporary Cease-Fire Invoked as Contras, Sandinistas Begin Talks

The Sandinista government and the Contras announced a temporary, informal truce in the Nicaraguan guerrilla war Monday as the two sides opened negotiations on a lasting cease-fire.

After six hours of face-to-face meetings, the two sides agreed to study each others’ cease-fire proposals and discuss them again today.

Leaders of both warring factions described the talks, which follow one of the fiercest battles in more than six years of fighting, as frank, respectful and productive. But they stopped short of predicting a quick settlement.

Arriving here as head of the government negotiating team, Nicaraguan Defense Minister Humberto Ortega said that he has ordered a unilateral halt to offensive operations by Sandinista ground and air forces while the peace talks continue.

Better Atmosphere Sought

“We want this step to contribute to a better atmosphere so that the counterrevolutionary leadership can quickly negotiate the definitive cease-fire for which our people and the people of Central America are clamoring so much,” Gen. Ortega said.

After three hours of talks, the first ever held inside Nicaragua, the rebel negotiators announced instructions to their own troops to halt attacks during the negotiations, which are scheduled to last three days.

The truce appears to be largely symbolic, based on unilateral pledges by both sides rather than a negotiated agreement with enforcement provisions. A similar halt in hostilities promised for last Christmas broke down as each side accused the other of staging attacks.

But the new truce set what both sides called a positive atmosphere for trying to break a longstanding deadlock over the kind of conditions to be negotiated for a permanent cease-fire.

The government offered a new cease-fire plan, said to be similar to ones it made in four previous negotiations since December. Focusing exclusively on military issues, it would concentrate rebel troops into truce zones, where they would be disarmed and given amnesty under international supervision.

Demand for ‘Democratization’

Contra negotiators again demanded that a cease-fire be linked to further “democratization” of Nicaragua under terms of a Central American peace agreement.

But on Monday they proposed a less formal 30-day truce, during which the government would free all political prisoners, allow “total press freedom” and complete the negotiation of a permanent cease-fire.

These initial conditions are less than what the rebels have demanded in the past and thus may be acceptable to the Sandinistas. Gone, for example, are demands for major constitutional reform and an end to the military draft.

Under the regional peace accord signed last August in Guatemala, the Sandinistas are committed to amnesty and press freedom. Though they are still holding about 3,300 political prisoners, they have expressed a willingness to free them after a cease-fire is in place.

“We are not inflexible about their (the Contras’) proposal,” Gen. Ortega said Monday. “We have heard their political arguments, and we have made ours.”

Gen. Ortega declined to detail the government proposal or say what points the two plans have in common. But he said the presentation of the plans was the highlight of “an important day that we believe can contribute to the achievement of peace.”

Alfredo Cesar, a Contra negotiator, said: “What happened today--the frank, open and direct exchange on many topics by the highest officials on both sides--created a climate appropriate to continue the discussions on these two proposals and that is, without any doubt, a step ahead.

“There is a tacit recognition on both sides that neither is looking for a military victory over the other,” the rebel leader added.

The talks are being held in a cafeteria at this shadeless, wind-swept southern border post on the Pan American Highway, opposite Costa Rica. They follow the largest Sandinista offensive of the war, which included an incursion by some Sandinista army forces across Nicaragua’s northern frontier into Honduras.

The offensive, involving a total of about 4,500 Sandinista troops, forced about 1,800 Contras out of northern Nicaragua but failed to capture the rebels’ command center and supply depots inside Honduras.

The drive ended and Sandinista troops pulled back into Nicaragua after the United States sent more than 3,000 troops to Honduras in a show of force and Honduran warplanes bombed suspected Sandinista army positions on both sides of the frontier.

Contras ‘a Little Weaker’

Cesar admitted that the attack, which cut the rebels’ main overland supply line, may have left the Contras “militarily a little weaker.” But he added that “we are stronger than ever politically” because of the Reagan Administration’s show of support for the rebels.

Although the negotiations here are scheduled to end Wednesday, Ortega said he is willing to stay as long as necessary to achieve an agreement.

The Sandinistas’ decision to hold the talks inside Nicaragua, after months of refusing to do so, was meant to make them appear flexible even as they refuse to discuss political issues. Contra leaders got written guarantees that they would not be arrested while they remained on Nicaraguan soil.

In a similar concession, the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front named Gen. Ortega, brother of President Daniel Ortega and one of the front’s nine all-powerful comandantes, to head an upgraded eight-man negotiating team.

Contra negotiators include three of the rebel movement’s six exiled civilian directors--Adolfo Calero, Cesar and Aristides Sanchez--three other political leaders and four military field commanders.

Obando Attends as Observer

For the first time since he inaugurated the peace talks last Dec. 3, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo attended as an observer rather than as a mediator with the power to make proposals. The Sandinista government dismissed the Roman Catholic leader from that role after Obando sided with the Contras in demanding a political agenda in previous rounds of talks.

The cardinal limited his participation Monday to a prayer for the 25,000 or more war dead. Obando was joined as a witness by Joao Baena Soares of Brazil, the secretary general of the Organization of American States.

Before the talks, the Sandinista party took a hard-line position. It turned out hundreds of demonstrators along the 95-mile stretch of highway from Managua to the border to cheer and wave banners at the government motorcade.

“Contras, Surrender or We Will Smash You!” many of the signs read.

The Contra delegation got a peaceful but unceremonious welcome as it arrived at the border post in a pale green bus of the Costa Rican Public Security Ministry. The group is lodged during the talks in the Costa Rican town of Liberia, an hour’s drive away.

Greeted by Border Guards

The rebel leaders were greeted here first by Nicaraguan border guards, who shared security duty with Costa Rican police. No ranking Nicaraguan official met the rebels until they were inside the cafeteria.

Except for 10 American peace activists, pro-Sandinista demonstrators were kept away from the border post. Among the American peace activists here were musician-actor Kris Kristofferson and Brian Willson, who became something of a Sandinista folk hero last September when he sat in front of a train he said was shipping weapons for the Contras through Concord, Calif. He lost both legs when the train rolled over him.

Some of the rebel negotiators were once supporters of dictator Anastasio Somoza or had belonged to the old Nicaraguan National Guard that fought the Sandinista insurrection and then left the country for exile shortly after Somoza was toppled in 1979.

Cesar, now 36, led a Sandinista guerrilla unit during the insurrection against Somoza and served in the Sandinista government when it was newly in power. He quit as central bank president in 1982 and went into exile to join the growing anti-Sandinista insurgency.

“Nine years later I am back here again, still struggling for the democracy and liberty that have been negated by the Sandinista leadership,” Cesar remarked. “I hope that today we can reverse that.”

Meanwhile, in Managua, the Sandinista government and opposition political parties and groups resumed a “national dialogue” that had foundered in December. The opposition participants, representing 14 organizations, accused the government in December of refusing to discuss their proposals for 17 constitutional amendments aimed at democratic reform.

After the meeting, opposition participants said the government now seems open to including most of the 17 proposed constitutional reforms on the dialogue agenda. Discussions on the agenda will continue today.

Although Monday’s session appeared to have made some progress, six of the 14 original opposition organizations refused to participate because they said the government had not formally convened the meeting.

Like the cease-fire negotiations in Sapoa, the “national dialogue” is part of a peace process agreed to by Nicaragua and four other Central American countries last August. Nicaragua has insisted that the dialogue is the only proper forum for discussion of political reforms.