Contras May Hike Political Demands : Could Call for End to 1-Party Rule in Managua

After fighting six years with U.S. support to overthrow the Sandinista government, Contra leaders have agreed to a 60-day cease-fire in exchange for little more than freedom for jailed supporters and the right to take part in Nicaraguan politics.

But rebel officials said Thursday they might raise new political demands, calling for the dismantling of what they call a one-party state, in the follow-up negotiations on disarmament of their 10,000-member guerrilla force.

The agreement Wednesday night is the first formal step toward ending a war that has embroiled Central America in superpower conflict, wrecked the Nicaraguan economy and claimed more than 25,000 lives.

Difficult Transition

It could also mark the first stage in a difficult transition for the Contras from a U.S.-financed rural insurgency to a conservative political movement in a Soviet-allied revolutionary state led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front.

Rebel leaders said they had little choice but to seek the best possible terms for a truce after Congress last month cut off their military aid.

The Nicaraguan agreement extended the informal truce declared Monday at the start of the peace talks. It calls for a supervised 60-day cease-fire starting April 1, followed by the release of 3,360 political prisoners.

As soon as rebel troops start moving into cease-fire zones, Contra leaders may send up to eight delegates to join a “national dialogue” in Managua where the government and 14 civic opposition parties are negotiating political reform.

“It was a trade-off,” rebel leader Alfredo Cesar said after signing the accord at the Nicaraguan border post of Sapoa. “They recognized us as a legitimate political force, and we recognized Daniel Ortega as the constitutional president of Nicaragua.”

But Cesar and other Contra officials warned that the good will could be severely tested over the next two months as new political pressures try the Sandinistas’ stated commitment to democratic pluralism.

The Contras have proposed suspending the military draft and endorsed an opposition bid for a private television station. They also support 17 legal changes proposed by the 14 opposition groups, which range from Communists to conservatives.

Several Proposals

Those proposals include “eliminating the partisan character” of the 85,000-member Sandinista People’s Army and reducing its size. They call for breaking total Sandinista control of the electoral court and the judiciary and abolishing Sandinista-run neighborhood defense councils.

While the proposals are discussed in the so-called national dialogue, separate negotiations are to begin April 6 on terms of the rebels’ disarmament and return to civilian life.

Adolfo Calero, another leading Contra negotiator, vowed Thursday that the rebels will not disarm if there is no significant progress in the national dialogue.

“If the Sandinistas don’t find a way to separate the state, the army and the party, then as far as we’re concerned there is no democracy, and as long as there is no democracy, there can be no definitive cease-fire,” he said.

‘Irreversible Democracy’

In a separate interview, Cesar said: “Our only guarantee is our guns. We’re not giving them up until we see irreversible democratic process in Nicaragua.”

Even if a cease-fire holds, the rebel leaders’ comments raised the prospect of a prolonged stalemate in which thousands of rebel troops would remain armed and in the field awaiting the outcome of difficult negotiations.

Rebel leaders broadcast radio messages to their troops Thursday, describing the agreement as “the first step toward peace with freedom and democratization.” They said they would seek new non-lethal aid from the United States to keep the troops in the field throughout the coming negotiations.

Since the national dialogue started last October, the Sandinistas have shown no inclination to ease their control of state institutions and have vowed to continue the draft in peacetime. The dialogue was suspended last December, over what opposition leaders called Sandinista intransigence, and resumed only this week.

Paul S. Reichler, an American lawyer who advised the Sandinista negotiators, said government negotiators in the national dialogue will now consider changes in the military service law and a decree that puts all television broadcasting in state hands.

Single Round of Talks

Reichler said the Sandinistas at first insisted on negotiating an entire cease-fire agreement, including disarmament terms, in a single round of talks. He said the government first suspected the rebels wanted only a temporary truce, to recover from the beating they took earlier this month when Sandinista forces cut their main overland supply line from Honduras.

But Reichler said that Calero, Cesar and other rebel negotiators gained the Sandinistas’ trust during the talks and got agreement on separate talks for disarmament.

“We gave them that 60-day space so the Contras can see that this (agreement) is real. It’s a period for confidence-building,” he said. “They will see that all the steps taken by the government toward democratization are for real, that these changes are irreversible.”

If Contra leaders return, however, they face certain hostility--some of it encouraged by Sandinista party activists--for the years of bloodshed.

A pro-Sandinista newspaper, El Nuevo Diario, said in an editorial earlier this week that it is one thing to negotiate with the Contras to end the war and quite another thing to forgive them.

“Ronald Reagan’s freedom fighters can never be respectfully treated by the Nicaraguan people . . . to whom they will always be traitors and murderers,” the paper said.

The Contras first arose in late 1981 as an irregular band of peasant farmers, angry over land confiscations, and former members of the late President Anastasio Somoza’s National Guard. The guard was defeated in the 1979 insurrection that overthrew Somoza and brought the Sandinistas to power.

Covert Funding

With covert CIA funding, the rebels staged their first major attacks in March, 1982, and grew to a force of more than 16,000 fighters with millions of dollars in military aid voted by Congress.

The Reagan Administration first justified the aid as a means of halting arms shipments through Nicaragua to leftist guerrillas in El Salvador. Later, Washington acknowledged that the Contras were a proxy army attempting to change the Sandinista regime or at least force it, as Reagan once said, to “cry uncle.”

The Contras never managed to capture and hold a single town. But as a major Contra offensive in 1987 pushed the economy to new depths of ruin, a peace plan offered by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez broke the stalemate.

Nicaragua, apparently desperate for peace, joined four other Central American nations in signing the plan last August. It calls for an amnesty, press freedom, political pluralism and a cutoff of aid to rebel forces to end the region’s guerrilla conflicts.

Aid Cutoff

After Nicaragua had complied with most of the plan and opened peace talks with the rebels, Congress voted Feb. 3 to cut off Contra aid.

“The Congress gave peace a chance and peace won tonight,” said a Sandinista negotiator after the Contras signed the truce Wednesday.

“This shows that once you start a dialogue, miracles can happen,” Arias said Thursday, calling the truce the biggest achievement of the peace plan so far.

Ortega called on the Reagan Administration to “subscribe to the accord” and “normalize its relations with Nicaragua” by negotiating a bilateral security agreement.

The Administration has, in the past, rejected that position in favor of multilateral security talks with all five Central American countries.