Sandinistas Reportedly Plan Peace Initiative for Bush

Moving to greet the incoming Bush Administration with a peace offensive, the Sandinista government has freed the last of 38 dissidents jailed in a July crackdown and is ready to resume talks with its Nicaraguan opponents and Central American neighbors.

President Daniel Ortega has already proposed direct negotiations with the United States soon after President-elect George Bush takes office Jan. 20 to seek the cutoff of U.S. support for the Contras and the end of the U.S. economic embargo.

Ortega also sought a meeting with the four other Central American presidents to revive their August, 1987, agreement for ending the region’s guerrilla wars. The summit, their first in a year, is due to take place Jan. 15-16 in El Salvador.

Opposition leaders and many foreign diplomats say they are skeptical of the Sandinistas’ intentions. Since peace talks with the Contras collapsed last June, the government has banned opposition rallies and tightened press censorship.

But Ortega’s critics say he will come under strong pressure at the summit to comply with the regional accord, which mandates the exercise of “freedom in all its forms” as a condition for peace.

In an ambiguous step in that direction, a Sandinista judge last Wednesday freed the last 10 of 38 activists charged with inciting violence during an anti-Sandinista rally in the town of Nandaime on July 10.

Thirteen defendants, including three released last month with the 25 who were acquitted, received suspended prison sentences of 18 months to three years. But the four most prominent defendants were stripped of their civil rights.

This week, two government ministers are to meet informally with leaders of 14 opposition parties, a step toward restarting a long-suspended “national dialogue” on the way democracy is practiced here. The Sandinistas say they are also willing to negotiate again with the Contras to achieve a formal cease-fire.

‘Mutual Respect’

“Obviously, our primary aim is to have relations of mutual respect, trade and economic cooperation with the United States,” Deputy Foreign Minister Victor Hugo Tinoco said in an interview. “We are going to take a series of reciprocal actions that contribute. We are going to try to make the Bush transition team understand that we are serious.”

Diplomats and anti-Sandinista politicians view Managua’s peace initiatives as a result of pressure on several fronts, including an outcry of foreign protest against the political crackdown and Bush’s stated commitment to the Contra cause.

While the war has been largely halted for nine months by an informal truce, Nicaragua’s long-battered economy has shrunk even more. After a devastating hurricane struck the country in October, several West European governments sent only token amounts of relief to register their objection to the jailing of the Nandaime protesters.

“The Sandinistas are trying to send positive signals to the world and especially the United States, but these are just tactical steps,” said Agustin Jarquin Anaya, one of the freed defendants. “They are just looking for breathing space to continue a repressive system.”

The opposition points to the suspension of the rights of four of its leaders last week as evidence that the government is unwilling to let up on their movement.

Those disenfranchised include Carlos Huembes Trejos, president of the Nicaraguan Democratic Coordinate, the main anti-Sandinista coalition, and Roger Guevara Mena, its secretary general. The others are Miriam Arguello, a longtime Conservative leader, and Jarquin, who heads a faction of the Social Christian Party.

Each was convicted of seven different offenses, including assaulting police officers who broke up the government-authorized rally by 3,000 people.

Judge Luis Ariel Jimenez, a recently retired police lieutenant, deprived the four of such rights as leaving the country, voting, acquiring property or taking part in demonstrations without his permission during their three-year suspended sentences.

“We are still prisoners, except that our prison is no longer one with four walls,” Arguello said. “It is one with whatever limits the judge decides to impose. We have been sentenced to a civic death.”

Huembes said the political leaders will test their legal restrictions by trying to take part in new political demonstrations while challenging the verdict in an appeal.

The first test is expected to come Jan. 10, when the anti-Sandinista coalition plans a march in Managua. Sandinista leaders will be under conflicting pressures from militant party members who want to continue banning such demonstrations and from the foreign ministers of other Central American countries, who will be gathered here that week to plan the summit.

“It is a good moment to call on all Nicaraguans, including those who were jailed, to work for peace and distance themselves from aggressive positions, from the North American policy of aggression,” Ortega told reporters when the prisoners were released.

Preference for Dukakis

Sandinista officials made no secret of their preference for Democratic candidate Michael S. Dukakis in the U.S. presidential race because he was opposed to using the Contra army assembled and funded for seven years by the Reagan Administration.

The Sandinistas, who viewed President Reagan as the incarnation of evil, are now saying they hope that Bush will be pragmatic enough to see their determination not to be overthrown militarily and will try negotiating instead.

Ortega pressed his Central American counterparts to hold a summit before Bush’s inauguration to seek support for his call for peace negotiations. He also wants a commitment from Honduras to stop letting the Contras use its territory--a move that could limit Washington’s options.

A Costa Rican official said that the other four presidents agreed to the summit because they saw that the Sandinistas, weakened economically by the hurricane, would be vulnerable to diplomatic pressure to permit more freedom.

“The Sandinistas want to get some things fixed before January so they can influence the debate in Washington over policy toward Nicaragua,” said a European official who is frequently consulted by the Managua government. “They know they have a long road ahead before they settle this conflict, but they are ready to be flexible if it leads to peace.”