Nation’s Course Won’t Shift, Sandinistas Vow : Directorate Warns Nicaragua’s Opposition Leadership to Avoid ‘Unreasonable’ Demands

The Sandinista leadership declared Friday that peace with the Contras will not change the course of Nicaragua’s 8-year-old revolution, and it warned opposition leaders against making “unreasonable” political demands.

In a message broadcast to the nation, the nine-member Sandinista National Directorate cautioned that, despite the preliminary cease-fire agreement Wednesday, Nicaragua is still the target of hostility by the Reagan Administration.

“The Sandinista Front calls on workers, peasants, all the Nicaraguan people, to continue their tasks in the military, economic, ideological and diplomatic defense of the nation against the aggressive policy of the United States,” it said.

The ruling party, it added, “will continue defending the peasants’ right to land, the right to work, the right of workers to organize, the right of the workers, peasants and all other sectors to free expression.”

President Daniel Ortega read the statement to about 400 Sandinista party leaders after briefing them in a closed meeting about the truce agreement.

The statement was a warning against premature euphoria over the accord and a signal that the government will not make significant political concessions, such as reversing the Sandinista land redistribution program, in subsequent negotiations on the disarmament of 10,000 rebels.

Under the agreement, Sandinista and Contra forces will observe an informal truce until April 1, then a 60-day cease-fire. Negotiations on terms of a definitive cease-fire are to begin here April 6.

Role in Dialogue

Contra leaders will be allowed to return from exile to take their political demands to a separate national dialogue between the government and opposition parties. While agreeing not to receive more U.S. military aid, rebel leaders said they will not disarm their troops until the government agrees to major political changes.

Defense Minister Humberto Ortega, the chief Sandinista negotiator in the peace talks, met Friday with leaders of 14 opposition parties in the national dialogue and urged them not to support “unreasonable, opportunistic demands” on the government.

The Reagan Administration, he told reporters later, is trying to get Contra leaders “to provoke us, to make impossible proposals that supposedly will show that Nicaragua is being unreasonable and wreck this agreement.”

Accord Applauded

Pro-government newspapers described the peace accord Friday in triumphant language, calling it the result of Sandinista military, political and diplomatic superiority over the rebel movement.

“Since the agreement, the umbilical cord that fed the Yankee warfare against Nicaragua has been cut,” the Sandinista party newspaper Barricada said in an editorial Friday.

But the paper warned Sandinista activists to prepare for “a new phase of civic struggle” against Contras who return from exile “to challenge the power of the people and their conquests.”

The Marxist-inclined Sandinistas fought their way to power in 1979, defeating the National Guard of former President Anastasio Somoza. Although six years of war and economic decline have undermined their popularity, the Sandinistas remain the country’s best-organized political force.

Crucial Party Support

Support from the party’s rank-and-file has been crucial to the Sandinista leadership as it has restored press freedom and lifted restrictions on opposition parties under the terms of a Central American peace accord signed last August in Guatemala.

The leadership’s decisions, first to negotiate with the rebels and now to release political prisoners, have been controversial within the party but not divisive, according to party officials at Friday’s meeting.

“The people have confidence in the steps the government has taken,” Ortega told reporters after the session. “There is total support for the directorate.”

The statement read by Ortega called on the United States to respect the cease-fire accord, open bilateral talks to guarantee Nicaragua’s security and end a 3-year-old economic embargo against Nicaragua.

Demands U.S. Troops Leave

It also demanded the withdrawal of U.S. troops sent to neighboring Honduras last week in a show of support for the Contras after Nicaraguan troops crossed the border in pursuit of the rebels and urged Honduras to stop being “an instrument of the U.S. policy of aggression against Nicaragua.”

The opposition newspaper La Prensa and the major dissident coalition, the Democratic Coordinator, joined Friday in endorsing the cease-fire agreement.

But leaders of the coalition said their support was tempered by skepticism that the Sandinistas will comply with their commitment to let the Contras participate freely in political life.

“There should have been a carnival of happiness here over the end of six years of war,” said Ramiro Gurdian, a vice president of the coalition. “But what happened? People went about their business as usual. They don’t trust the Sandinistas. They have seen the Sandinistas sign a lot of things and never comply.”

Economy Remains Troubled

Adan Fletes, a Social Christian Party activist in the coalition, said the truce will not revive Nicaragua’s crippled economy unless it is followed by “a process of democratization” that will attract foreign loans and investment.

La Prensa, which has indirectly supported the Contra cause, struck an unusually optimistic tone. Its editorial said there were no winners or losers in the peace talks.

For the government, it said, peace is essential “to lower the level of controversy with the United States and detain the erosion of its popularity.” And for the Contras, it noted, the agreement will free its imprisoned supporters.

Supporting the government’s call for an agreement with the United States, La Prensa said, “It is a reality that this little country cannot live in peace and progress if it does not reconcile itself with the first power in the world.”