Dissension Reported in Rebels’ Ranks : Truce Not a ‘Surrender,’ Contra Negotiators Assert

Nicaraguan rebel leaders, under fire from some exile groups here after negotiating a surprise 60-day cease-fire with the Sandinista government, rejected charges Sunday that the agreement represents a Contra “surrender.”

“We were realistic, we decided to give it one more try,” said Marta Sacasa, spokeswoman for the Contras’ umbrella organization, the Nicaraguan Resistance. “It is a 60-day truce that has an ending. If there is no agreement on a definitive cease-fire, then the struggle will continue. We are not accepting a totalitarian society for our country.”

Sacasa’s denial of a sellout in the cease-fire agreement came a day after a reportedly turbulent Miami meeting at which the Contra directors, who approved the agreement last week at Sapoa, Nicaragua, described the negotiations to the 54-member governing assembly of the Nicaraguan Resistance.

She acknowledged that some assembly representatives had “reservations” about the cease-fire and that the Contras’ chief field commander, Enrique Bermudez, raised objections to parts of the accord, “but he said he intends to comply with it and he called for the resistance to unify at this time.”

Commission Formed

The six-hour leadership meeting ended in unity, she said, after the assembly representatives appointed a nine-man watchdog commission to monitor further negotiations between Contra leaders and the Sandinista government.

By naming the watchdog group, the assembly did not mean to censure the directors who negotiated the cease-fire but simply to assure that future talks would not be compromised, an assembly leader, Silvio Arguello, told the Miami Herald. The follow-up negotiations begin in Sapoa today when the two sides meet to establish zones in which Contra forces will remain during the cease-fire.

Nicaraguan exiles who stood outside the Saturday meeting at the Viscount Hotel here voiced considerable uncertainty and in some cases outright hostility about the cease-fire accord. Perhaps the most outspoken was Francisco Cardenal, one of the founders of the principal Contra military group, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force. Cardenal had to be pulled away from scuffling with a member of the assembly, Enrique Sanchez, who reportedly responded with the epithet “pig” after Cardenal called him a traitor.

On Sunday, another Contra spokesman, Bosco Matamoros, said that the preliminary truce accord signed in Sapoa “is subject to the implementation of a definite cease-fire.”

‘Framework’ for Peace

“What we have is only a general framework,” Matamoros said in an interview. “We have to see if (the Sandinistas) are committed to democratization and the other commitments that they’ve made. The truce that we have agreed to now means only a halt to offensive actions, not a total cease-fire. Before we carry out a cease-fire, we have to agree on the zones, on access, on jurisdiction and other issues.”

Asked if the Contras were looking for an escape hatch from the Sapoa accord, Matamoros replied: “No, no, no. We want to keep the process going. But there has to be real democratization (in Nicaragua). What the Sandinistas are describing are just preliminary steps; there has to be absolute freedom of the press, freedom of movement, freedom of association. The constitution says, for example, that the state controls TV broadcasting. That has to change.”

Replying to a question about reports of internal dissension among the Contras over the accord made by their leaders at Sapoa, Matamoros said, “There is a basic consensus that this is a difficult moment.”

Times staff writer Doyle McManus contributed to this story from Washington.