New Dissident Roundup Reported : Ousted U.S. Ambassador Leaves for Washington

U.S. Ambassador Richard Melton, expelled from Nicaragua by the Sandinista regime, left Managua on Tuesday for emergency consultations in Washington as opposition leaders charged that foes of the government were being rounded up in a new wave of arrests.

The expulsion of Melton and seven other U.S. diplomats followed the closing Monday by the Sandinistas of the opposition’s two principal news outlets and an unusually violent clash between thousands of anti-Sandinista demonstrators and police Sunday.

Melton, 52, who assumed his post as ambassador just two months ago, boarded a plane in a drizzling rain at Sandino International Airport.

After fighting a crush of reporters, a grim-faced Melton, his hands trembling, read a brief statement.

‘Decisive Moment’

“As I stated upon my arrival in this country, this is a decisive moment in the relations between the United States and Nicaragua. The events in the immediate future will determine the course of our bilateral relations and the possibilities of a national reconciliation among all Nicaraguans,” he said.

The Sandinistas accused Melton of orchestrating and inciting anti-government protests, and Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto on Monday gave the Americans 72 hours to leave the country. The seven others will leave today, a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said.

The U.S. Embassy called the expulsions “outrageous and completely without justification.”

In Washington on Tuesday, President Reagan ordered the expulsion of Nicaraguan Ambassador Carlos Tunnermann and seven other diplomats in relation for Managua’s action.

Also Tuesday, leaders of opposition political parties protested the government’s shutdown of the Roman Catholic Church radio station and the closing of the opposition La Prensa newspaper for 15 days. And they denounced what they described as unprecedented brutality by police in the clash at the Sunday rally.

In that demonstration, in the town of Nandaime, 25 miles south of Managua, police used tear gas to break up a protest march. The government reported an estimated 40 arrests, including three opposition leaders.

Ramiro Gurdian, vice president of an opposition umbrella group that organized Sunday’s protest, said police continued Tuesday to arrest people who had participated, in some cases detaining them at their places of employment.

100 Reported Detained

Gurdian offered no exact numbers for the arrests, but other opposition activists estimated that more than 100 people have been detained since Sunday.

The expulsion of Melton--both the severity of the measure and the timing of it--stunned diplomats and other longtime observers here. Despite a long history of stormy diplomatic relations between the two countries and seven years of U.S.-financed rebellion aimed at toppling the Managua government, never had the Sandinistas taken so drastic a step.

Ironically, the move came after a period of relative calm, both in U.S.-Nicaraguan relations and in the war with the U.S.-backed Contras. A temporary truce in the fighting has been in effect since April 1, although violations have been reported by both sides recently.

But the Sandinistas contend that the U.S. Embassy under Melton had taken an unprecedented activist role in stirring up domestic unrest. Unlike his predecessor, Harry Bergold, Melton attended numerous public and private meetings with the opposition and encouraged anti-government protests, the Sandinistas said.

‘Belligerent Stance’

“He took a more belligerent stance,” said one well-placed Sandinista official. “He wasn’t just attending protests--he was pushing people into the streets.”

A government newspaper Tuesday published a photograph of an embassy official said to have been present at the Nandaime demonstration.

Melton’s activities, the Sandinistas maintained, threatened to lend the traditionally disorganized opposition a new-found coherence.

But some observers dismissed those explanations, suggesting instead that the Sandinistas are hoping to refocus international and domestic attention on a U.S.-Nicaragua conflict away from growing discontent at home.

“They were in need of a spectacular event to distract the people,” said one Latin American diplomat, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified by name. “But this has a very high cost.”

By so dramatically escalating the stakes in the long conflict between Nicaragua and the United States, the Sandinistas also may hope to offer their supporters a fresh rallying point, diplomatic sources said.

At the same time, these sources suggested, the government is likely to attempt to use Melton’s expulsion and the retaliatory expulsions of Tunnermann and seven other diplomats to divert attention from the nation’s more pressing economic turmoil, while quieting, at least temporarily, two outspoken critics of government policy.