Nicaraguans’ Peace Hopes Fade With Breakdown of Talks

This country entered a period of deep uncertainty Friday after its highest hopes for ending a six-year-old guerrilla war appeared to collapse.

Nicaraguan government and rebel leaders, who broke off six months of peace talks Thursday, said they saw little likelihood of renewing contact soon anywhere but on the battlefield. While each side vowed not to shoot first, both expressed a belief that their 81-day-old truce will not hold for long.

The specter of renewed fighting will limit the Sandinista government’s capacity to manage an economic crisis, growing labor unrest and demands by a broad spectrum of civic adversaries for sweeping political reforms, according to government and opposition leaders.

‘Entering a New Crisis’

“The country is entering a new crisis,” said Mauricio Diaz, a leading opposition figure. “It is on the verge of economic collapse and more war, with no solution in sight. The people’s expectations have crashed to the ground, because of failures by both sides.”

Hopes for ending the guerrilla war had soared since late last year, when the Sandinistas began lifting some curbs on political freedom under the terms of a five-nation agreement for ending Central America’s guerrilla conflicts.

The process led the Soviet-armed Sandinista government into talks with the U.S.-backed Contras that produced a cease-fire accord March 23 and follow-up negotiations on a final armistice that eventually faltered.

President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica, Nobel prize-winning architect of the regional peace treaty, appealed to both sides Friday “to have patience.”

“I have said a thousand and one times that arriving at agreements is not easy,” Arias told reporters before meeting with Alfredo Cesar, one of the Contra leaders, at the presidential residence in San Jose. “They have to continue talking because there is not any other solution.”

Outlook for New Talks

Cesar told an earlier press conference that political conditions favoring new negotiations might take “two or three years” to develop.

“The ball is in (the Sandinistas’) court,” he said. “We are not going to ask for more talks.”

Gen. Humberto Ortega, the Sandinista defense minister, said that he is ready for new talks any time but that he views the immediate prospects as “minimal.”

The talks broke down after the Contras rejected a Sandinista proposal to disarm them by Sept. 28. The government offered to release about 3,300 political prisoners in stages and to reach accords with all opposition parties on a broad agenda of democratic guarantees before the disarmament began.

Instead, the rebels demanded amnesty for all anti-Sandinista prisoners as a first step and a precise timetable for carrying out the promised political reforms, demands that the Sandinistas were not prepared to meet.

Reagan Disappointed

In Washington on Friday, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said President Reagan was disappointed at the Sandinistas’ “rejection of the Nicaraguan Resistance proposal to . . . end the war in Nicaragua.”

He said that Reagan had directed Max M. Kampelman, a State Department counselor, to “seek the views of the (Central American) democracies on the current situation in Nicaragua.”

Adolfo Calero, one of the Contras’ top civilian leaders, told reporters in Washington that the Sandinistas had acted in bad faith. He called on the United States to resume military aid to the rebels.

Calero said the Sandinistas had failed to comply with the terms of the March 23 accord that established the current fragile truce between the two sides.

“The Sandinistas have threatened to annihilate the opposition,” he asserted. “The only alternative we have in the face of those threats is to defend ourselves.”

Kemp Urges Arms Package

Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) urged the Administration to propose a new military aid package for the Contras. He said that it should be equal in value to what the Soviet Union provided for the Sandinistas in the first quarter of this year--$105 million, by Kemp’s estimate.

Calero said he believed this to be a reasonable figure.

Cut off from U.S. military aid since February, the Contras appear to be maneuvering for one last pitch to get such assistance renewed before the Reagan Administration leaves office. For that reason, the Sandinistas expect the rebels to provoke them.

Tensions in the countryside where the war is fought have escalated in recent days. On Friday, the Defense Ministry said four Contras died in two attacks on Sandinista patrols and that 77 peasants were seized in four recruitment raids by the rebels on four villages this week.

Until last week, the truce appeared to be working. After counting about 1,350 war dead in the three months before the fighting stopped, the government reported 18 soldiers and six civilians killed in April and May.

Offensive Moves Halted

The Sandinista army has pledged to observe a unilateral halt of offensive operations until June 30. Contra leaders said they, too, will not attack first. But the top rebel commander, Enrique Bermudez, ordered his men Friday to hold their ground if Sandinista troops approach, instead of retreating to avoid combat.

“We’re going to overcome this hard test,” Bermudez said in a radio broadcast monitored here. “We’re going to achieve the final objectives: victory, democracy and freedom for the Nicaraguan people.”

Besides holding up a release of war prisoners on both sides, the collapse of peace talks has cast uncertainty over a seven-month-old “national dialogue” between the Sandinistas and 14 opposition parties.

It was in that forum that the government offered this week to write the rules of a more democratic postwar Nicaragua with Contra delegates participating. Opposition leaders said Friday that they now fear the Sandinistas have no further interest in resuming the dialogue, which has been suspended for two months.

“There are two extreme possibilities,” said Jose Antonio Bonilla, a spokesman for the 14 opposition groups. “Either the Sandinistas will reach agreements with us in order to bring the Contras back to the peace table, or they will abandon the dialogue for a total military solution.”

A broad spectrum of opposition groups, ranging from Communists to conservatives, share the Contras’ demands for guarantees of free speech, the right to strike, fair elections, and independent judiciaries and the end of Sandinista party control over the army and the police.

Sandinista officials have offered to renew the dialogue on some of these issues but warn that the war will limit the concessions that can be made.

Asked if the end of peace talks will bring harsher measures against internal criticism, Gen. Ortega said no. But he quickly added that there will be little tolerance for “extremists in the opposition who looked to the Contra as their superman, their savior.”

Opposition leaders say the government had already begun to crack down, or simply to ignore dissident views, as negotiations with the Contras foundered in recent weeks.

On Thursday, as the talks were collapsing, the Sandinista majority in the National Assembly dismissed strong objections from every party in the opposition bloc and passed a law sharply limiting the powers of municipal officials to be elected next year.

Three anti-Sandinista radio news programs that returned to the air in January in a dramatic easing of censorship have been silenced for up to 10 days in the last month for broadcasting what the Interior Ministry called “false information” from the mouths of Contras or opposition activists.

Government officials have been upset by news coverage of unrest over Sandinista military recruitment and strikes by thousands of construction workers and auto mechanics protesting low wages. With no peace in sight, these pressures are expected to mount.

In random interviews Friday, people in Managua expressed more concern over the draft than any other consequence of the broken peace talks.

“I don’t see any future for as long as the bloodshed and the recruiting don’t stop threatening our children,” said Alicia Tercero. She said her 13-year-old son moves from house to house within the extended family to avoid being drafted, even though he is legally underaged.

Inflation, fueled by defense spending, has already cut workers’ purchasing power by half since a major devaluation in February. Last weekend, President Daniel Ortega warned a gathering of labor leaders that their wage demands must wait “if we are forced to take measures to confront the counterrevolutionaries with greater force.”

Until the war ends, the Sandinistas cannot hope to get significant new infusions of foreign aid or even begin to rebuild the economy. But officials are confident they can weather another Contra offensive.

“We are maneuvering a ship through very agitated waters,” Vice President Sergio Ramirez said this week. “We have had five, six years of grave economic deterioration, but we haven’t been destabilized. If we achieve a negotiated settlement, this situation will change immediately. But if not, we will continue maneuvering the ship.”

Times staff writer Don Shannon, in Washington, contributed to this story.