Ortega Floats Plan to End War Without Contra Talks

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, moving to preempt any initiative by the Bush Administration, offered a plan Wednesday to settle his country’s civil conflict without further talks with the U.S.-backed Contras.

The proposal asks Honduras to help disarm and repatriate thousands of Nicaraguan rebels under an expanded amnesty program. It would allow outside inspectors to verify whether the Sandinista government is complying with its promise of a freer Nicaragua.

Ortega’s plan, though not publicly announced, became a focus of intense discussion among some of the 11 Latin American heads of state gathering here for today’s inauguration of President-elect Carlos Andres Perez. Perez himself is assuming a major role in the search for peace.

Perez invited Ortega to a 20-minute meeting Wednesday for the Nicaraguan to outline his ideas to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who was having lunch with the Venezuelan. Later, after separate meetings with the presidents of Guatemala and Honduras, Ortega said he found “a positive, constructive spirit” for reviving a long-stagnant Central American peace efforts.

But reaction to Ortega’s proposal was mixed. Carter and Perez told Ortega it appeared to be an attempt to bypass a five-nation regional peace pact through a bilateral deal with only Honduras, according to a participant in their meeting.

A Costa Rican official said the Sandinistas need to make other concessions, such as ending press censorship, to end the conflict. “They’re offering about 20% of what is needed,” he said.

However, Honduran officials agreed to study the proposal, which calls for voluntary repatriation to Nicaragua for any of the 10,000 or more Contras camped in its territory.

The whirl of diplomacy came as President Bush’s aides were still debating a Latin American policy. Vice President Dan Quayle, representing Bush at the inauguration, arrived Wednesday with no policy initiatives, U.S. officials said.

After assembling and arming the Contras in 1981, the Reagan Administration insisted that the Sandinistas negotiate with them. Washington was often criticized in Latin America for caring too little about the region’s $420-billion foreign debt burden and too much about ousting the Sandinistas.

Central American leaders who saw Ortega’s proposal called it a reformulation of previous ones, except that it ruled out a resumption of peace talks with rebel leaders who do not first disarm. The rebel army has been mostly idled since the cutoff of U.S. military aid a year ago and the breakdown of talks last June.

In an interview, Ortega said: “The Contra is dead. It is difficult to converse with a corpse.”

Instead, he said, his revolutionary government is acting unilaterally to comply with an August, 1987, pact among the five Central American nations to achieve peace with democratic freedoms. This, he added, is aimed at satisfying the Contras’ demands and laying the groundwork for direct talks with the United States.

Cuts in Armed Forces

Ortega cited steps taken this week to open Nicaraguan state companies to minority control by private shareholders. He said the Sandinista army, estimated at more than 70,000, is being cut by 10,000 men and that opposition parties have been invited to form a council that will supervise next year’s presidential elections.

“If we had not defeated the Contras, we couldn’t be doing any of this,” Ortega said. “What Nicaragua is doing internally is giving a clear sign of our political will to change without the need for negotiations.”

Alfredo Cesar, a Nicaraguan rebel leader, denied that the Contras are beaten. “Unless the negotiations (between the Contras and Sandinistas) resume,” he said, “the armed conflict will continue in one way or another.”

But Cesar said the involvement of Perez, a respected elder statesman who was president here from 1974-79, offered hope for changing the Sandinistas through diplomatic pressure. He said he had asked Perez to “coordinate efforts of Latin American countries and Washington” to pacify Nicaragua and to withhold economic aid unless the Sandinistas comply with the regional peace accord.

Perez helped the Sandinistas topple dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979, when Carter was U.S. President. The Venezuelan then became critical of the Sandinistas after they cracked down on their political foes. Both sides in the Nicaraguan conflict now say they believe that Perez is their ally.

“What this shows is not that he’s trying to be all things to all people, but that there may be a lot of common ground in Nicaragua,” said Paul S. Reichler, an American lawyer who advises the Sandinistas.

Perez told Bush in Washington in December that he opposes further U.S. military aid to the Contras. But in a two-hour meeting with Ortega here Tuesday, Perez insisted on “curbing the overwhelming power of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua,” a participant in the meeting said.

Nicaraguan officials said Perez has not insisted that Ortega resume talks with the Contras, nor has he endorsed Ortega’s frequent call for direct talks with the United States.

Instead, the Venezuelan leader is said to be trying to revive peace talks among the Central American presidents. A summit is expected to be held in El Salvador in two weeks--aimed at ending that country’s guerrilla war as well.

Many diplomats here believe Perez wants to pacify Central America to enhance his stature with Washington in a cause more important to him--debt relief for all of Latin America.

President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica, author of the Central American accord and an irritant to Washington’s policy of backing the Contras, said here Wednesday that he is “much more optimistic” about peace now that Reagan is gone.

“I see a stronger commitment from Mr. Bush and Mr. (James A.) Baker (III, the U.S. secretary of state) to work together to forge a new policy for this part of the world,” he said. “I don’t see in them the arrogance of trying to impose whatever they think is convenient for Latin America.”