Ortega Shuts Door on Contra Talks : Nicaragua Leader Blames U.S., Says He Will Make No Peace Concessions

President Daniel Ortega declared Saturday that the Sandinistas “have reached the limits of our flexibility” and will make no concessions to bring about a resumption of peace talks with the Contras.

“If everyone is worried about peace, they should go tell the United States: If you want peace in Central America, then stop the war against Nicaragua, and peace will come automatically to the region,” Ortega said in a toughly worded lecture to Nicaraguan diplomats gathered in Managua.

Ortega pointedly rejected a public appeal by President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica that the Sandinista government reverse a month-old crackdown on Nicaragua’s internal political opposition and offer a new round of peace talks in Costa Rica with the U.S.-backed guerrillas.

Proposed New Venues

Instead, he proposed new peace talks in Managua or Washington, venues that the Contras have already rejected.

Negotiations aimed at ending the six-year-old war broke off June 9 when rebel leaders rejected the Sandinistas’ final peace offer at a stormy session in Managua. Since then, a March 21 truce agreement has been increasingly violated.

Two foreign ambassadors here said the Sandinistas seem to have concluded in recent weeks that nothing can be achieved through new peace talks as long as the Reagan Administration remains in office and exerts influence over the Contra leadership.

Dionisio Marenco, a Nicaraguan government spokesman, said that interpretation is correct. Without flatly ruling out a new round of talks with the Contras, he said the political crackdown “puts us in a much better position to negotiate directly with the United States” under a new U.S. administration next year.

The latest peace initiative came from President Arias, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for fashioning the Central American peace accord. The five-nation agreement of August, 1987, led to a dramatic easing of curbs on opposition political activity in Nicaragua and six months of peace negotiations.

43 Opponents Jailed

But the political opening ended abruptly a month after the talks broke down. Sandinista police broke up a legal demonstration near Managua on July 10 and sentenced 43 participants to jail terms. Within 48 hours, four opposition media outlets were shut, the U.S. ambassador and seven other American diplomats were expelled and the country’s largest private business was confiscated.

In an open letter last Tuesday, Arias asked Ortega to free the jailed demonstrators and reopen the Roman Catholic radio station, which remains closed. He said such steps would pave the way to new peace talks.

“This pressure from the president of Costa Rica is unacceptable,” Ortega declared Saturday. “We would not ask him or any other president to free a certain person for the sake of good relations with Nicaragua. We have not complained when other governments shut down the media.

“The question is not what Nicaragua is going to do” to achieve peace, he added. “There has been speculation about concessions and flexibility (on Nicaragua’s part). But we have reached the limit of our flexibility. There can be no more flexibility by the Nicaraguan government.”

Some Still Optimistic

Guido Fernandez, a Costa Rican presidential spokesman, said Saturday that he did not take Ortega’s remarks as a final rejection of the Arias initiative.

“Oscar never takes no for an answer,” Fernandez said in a telephone interview from Costa Rica. “He will insist and insist again that there have to be peace talks. The next move is up to the Sandinistas. We have learned that they say no three or four times before they say yes.”

As architect of the peace accord and leader of the region’s oldest democracy, Fernandez added, Arias has the “moral authority” to demand that Ortega live up to his commitments under the regional peace accord.

The Nicaraguan crackdown has also come under criticism from Western governments that give aid to the Sandinistas. At Saturday’s culmination of a weeklong gathering here, Nicaraguan diplomats were drilled in the tough response they are expected to dish out to foreign critics.

Wearing his military uniform, Ortega chided the diplomats for communicating the pressures of foreign governments to Managua instead of standing up to them. He urged them to “stop acting like ambassadors of those countries.”

The Sandinista line of defense, he said, is that opposition forces broke the law by promoting internal disorder and are being punished within the law. On the other hand, Ortega added, the United States is an international outlaw that promotes the Contra war in violation of a 1985 World Court order.

“Don’t feel guilty of what we are doing here in defense of the revolution, as if we were committing some crime, some sin,” he said. “We cannot accept an interventionist attitude on the part of other governments and political leaders who disrespect our laws. We have to tell them that if they want peace in Central America, (they must) take a valiant, belligerent stand and call on the United States by name to respect the decision of the (World) Court.”

Hits Contra Aid Vote

Ortega said that the U.S. Senate’s approval Wednesday of $27 million in non-lethal aid to the Contras “shows disrespect for the international legal order” and the Central American peace accord.

He also rejected the assertion by Arias, who opposes military aid to the Contras, that the Soviet Union, which arms the Sandinistas, shares blame with the United States for the Nicaraguan conflict.

“Why involve the Soviet Union in this discussion? This is a problem between the United States and Nicaragua, not a problem between East and West,” Ortega said.