Contras Reject Offer of Truce Extension : Little Progress in Nicaragua Talks; Rebels Worried About Food

The Sandinista government Thursday offered a 30-day extension of the Nicaraguan truce now due to run through May, but the Contras rejected it.

Gen. Humberto Ortega, the defense minister, announced the government offer as he opened a fourth round of talks with rebel leaders on how to carry out a preliminary peace agreement signed at Sapoa, Nicaragua, on March 23.

The negotiations have made little progress, and Ortega said an extension of the truce until June 30 would “make up for the time lost” while giving the government longer to persuade the U.S.-backed guerrillas to agree to lay down their weapons and end the six-year war.

Bosco Matamoros, a Contra spokesman, dismissed the proposal as “premature” and accused the government of seeking to prolong the negotiations unnecessarily.

He said the rebels are pressing first to negotiate a formal separation of military forces that would allow rebel troops to receive non-lethal U.S. aid inside Nicaragua. Only with their troops being resupplied would the rebels agree to discuss armistice conditions.

Under the Sapoa accord, both sets of follow-up negotiations were to be completed during a 60-day cease-fire starting April 1. While the rebels want to negotiate one step at a time, the government insists on a single agreement that includes a deadline for the rebels to disarm and return to civilian life.

The swiftness of the rebels’ rejection of the latest government offer was a sign of a continuing impasse.

‘Slow Pace’

“We are very concerned at the slow pace of implementing the Sapoa agreement,” Matamoros said. “Obviously, a situation in which our forces are not receiving adequate food supplies could derail the agreement.”

Until their U.S. aid was cut off at the end of February, the Contras received most of their weapons, food, clothing, medicine and cash in airdrops into Nicaragua.

The United States resumed non-lethal aid to Contra base camps in Honduras last week. The Sandinista government and the Organization of American States, which monitors the Sapoa accord, have protested this aid. They said it violates the accord’s provision that any such assistance must be delivered by a neutral organization.

Because of the dispute, Contras inside Nicaragua cannot receive U.S. supplies, and at least 3,000 of them--a third of the rebel army--have marched to Honduras.

“We have plenty of ammunition stored but there are tremendous anxieties about food, clothing and boots,” a rebel soldier in Honduras said this week. “In areas of Nicaragua where there are no settlers, no cattle, the situation is desperate.”

Sandinista officials said Thursday they could not allow the rebels to be resupplied under conditions that prolong a definitive settlement. They proposed that rebel forces receive non-lethal supplies through the International Red Cross until the end of May, while negotiations continue.

There was no formal reply from the rebels. Previously, they have rejected the Red Cross as a supplier because they regard its Nicaraguan chapter as pro-Sandinista.

A more fundamental dispute concerns the next stage of negotiations. The Sandinistas insisted again Thursday that rebel leaders may return to Nicaragua as civilian politicians and discuss their demands for political changes only after signing an armistice--a condition the Contras reject.

Ortega said the government’s hard-line position is “justified more than ever” by open feuding between the top two Contra leaders over the peace accord.

The power struggle came to a head last weekend when Adolfo Calero, the top Contra civilian leader, tried to take personal control of the main rebel army from the supreme commander, Enrique Bermudez.

Bermudez, who has criticized the Sapoa accord negotiated by Calero and other rebel civilians, rebuffed the attempted takeover, and the two factions later reached their own truce.

As a result, Bermudez voiced support for the peace talks and sent the top four officers of his general staff to sit at the negotiating table behind Calero and the four other civilians of the rebel directorate. It was the highest-ranking rebel military delegation to meet with the Sandinista government.

However, Victor Hugo Tinoco, Nicaragua’s deputy foreign minister, said Thursday the government believes the rebels are still so deeply divided that an agreement with them will be difficult.

Internal Dispute

“The outcome of these talks will depend less on an understanding between the government and the Contras than on the outcome of this internal dispute within the Contra ranks,” he said.

Ortega charged that Bermudez is plotting, with encouragement from the Reagan Administration, to resume the war. He said that Bermudez sent his military aides here “to block an agreement” but expressed hope that they will be persuaded by Contra civilian leaders who want a negotiated settlement.

Matamoros, the Contra spokesman, denied any rifts in the rebel delegation.