Baker Urges W. Europe to Pressure Nicaragua

Secretary of State James A. Baker III is urging West European countries to put pressure on Nicaragua by tying their economic aid to the Central American country’s internal political situation, a senior State Department official said Monday.

Baker told the foreign ministers of Denmark and Norway--North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies that send aid to Nicaragua--that the Bush Administration wants to “give diplomacy a chance” to end the seven-year Nicaraguan civil war, the official said.

In an unusual twist, he asked the two governments, which have been largely sympathetic to the leftist Managua regime, to support U.S. policy by using their aid as a tool to push the Sandinistas toward more internal democracy.

‘Give Diplomacy a Chance’

Baker told the Scandinavians “that we would hope that (they) would help us give diplomacy a chance . . . by at least having that aid addressed to . . . democratization and freedom of religion and freedom of the press,” the aide said.

Norway gives Nicaragua about $16 million a year in aid. Among the NATO allies, Denmark, Italy, France and Spain also have significant aid programs, consisting almost entirely of food and other humanitarian aid. A total of $94.5 million in West European aid reached Nicaragua last year, U.S. officials said.

Cool Response

The immediate response from the Danish and Norwegian governments to Baker’s proposal was cool, a U.S. official acknowledged.

“For most of them,” he said, “it is not a comfortable concept.”

Aid to the Sandinistas is a publicly popular program in most European countries, where governments have not campaigned against the Managua regime as did the Reagan Administration. Washington supports the Contras, the Nicaraguan rebels who are fighting the regime.

Baker’s predecessor as secretary of state, George P. Shultz, frequently advised European governments that he considered aid to Managua a mistake. But Baker’s proposal is believed to be the first that the U.S. government has made suggesting the linking of European aid policy so closely to American pressure on Managua.

Baker was in Denmark and Norway as part of a weeklong, 15-country dash through the NATO countries, his first trip abroad as secretary of state.