Arias Sees Key Castro Role in Latin Peace

Fidel Castro has an important role to play in achieving peace in Central America, and the Cuban leader has been asked to influence Nicaragua to actively rejoin negotiations for a regional settlement, President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica said Thursday.

Speaking at a news conference, Arias said he held several conversations with the Cuban president while both were in Quito to attend the inauguration of Ecuador’s new president, Rodrigo Borja Cevallos.

“This was the first time I have talked to him,” said Arias, who is the principal architect of the Central American peace process. He added that he urged Castro to ask Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to respond to a letter that Arias sent him last month, asking the Sandinista regime to rejoin the process.

However, Arias refused to answer directly when asked if Castro had said he would help. An aide to Arias said later that the Cuban made no commitment.

Arias’ letter to Ortega asked the Sandinistas to release opposition leaders who were arrested when the Managua government violently broke up an opposition rally earlier this summer.

Furthermore, Ortega was asked to ease restrictions on the press and to agree to attend new negotiations with the U.S.-backed Contras in some Latin American country other than Nicaragua.

On Thursday, Arias again suggested his own country as the site of the talks, but he said he would support other locations, including Ecuador. In June, the Contras broke off the last round of face-to-face talks with the Sandinistas, which took place in Managua, because of government-imposed restrictions on their travel and their opportunities to meet with resident Nicaraguan opposition leaders.

Need Support of Many

When asked why Castro, the Communist leader of a regime disliked by the United States and some Central American leaders, should be involved, Arias answered: “I believe that to consolidate peace in Central America, we need the support of many people, and Castro is one of them. He has a very important role in achieving peace.”

Arias, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his Central American peace plan, was asked if the process has a chance of success.

“Everybody supports it in public,” he said, “but in reality there are many obstacles.”

One of them evidently is the U.S. Senate’s approval Wednesday of a $27-million non-military aid program for the Contras.

“Unhelpful” was the way Arias described the Senate vote. “I don’t oppose humanitarian aid (to the Contras), but I oppose military aid, and I oppose it (non-military assistance) if it is conditional.”

This was a reference to the Senate measure, which permits a vote on sending $16.5-million worth of warehoused military supplies to the Contras as early as this fall if President Reagan certifies that the peace or security of Central America is threatened.

Arias said he has no plans to meet here with Ortega, who also arrived to celebrate Borja’s inauguration and to sign an agreement Thursday to resume diplomatic relations with Ecuador, cut in 1985 because the Sandinista leader called then-President Leon Febres Cordero an American puppet.

“I have talked to him (Ortega) many times,” Arias said, “and I will have more opportunities in the future. I can see him any time.”

There had been strong speculation that the two would talk in Ecuador, but some diplomats said that Arias wanted to wait for Ortega to answer the letter first.

Arias has criticized the Sandinistas for not fully implementing various parts of the peace accord that was signed by the five Central American presidents on Aug. 7, 1987, saying that they should be blamed for the tattered state of the process. Nevertheless, he refused Thursday to endorse the concept of sanctions against Nicaragua.