5 Latin Leaders Agree on Disbanding Contras : Will Devise a Plan in 90 Days to Demobilize Rebels, Remove Them From Honduras Bases

Presidents of the five Central American nations agreed Tuesday to devise a plan within 90 days to demobilize the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan rebel army and remove its guerrillas from bases in Honduras.

In return, Nicaragua’s Sandinista government pledged to hold internationally supervised elections by next February, nine months earlier than scheduled, to free more than 1,600 political prisoners and to give opposition parties “equal access” to state-run broadcast media.

Progress Hailed

The steps to end the seven-year conflict between Nicaragua and the Contras were taken during a meeting here of the presidents of Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica. The two-day summit thus resuscitated the Central American peace accord they signed in August, 1987.

All five leaders hailed the new accords as an advance. Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez, author of the 1987 accord, called them “very significant commitments.”

“This is another sign to the entire world that we Central Americans are fully convinced of the obligation to silence the guns and open the road to reconciliation,” Arias said.

If carried out, the agreements would foreclose the Bush Administration’s option of keeping a large Contra force ready to be revived as a weapon to extract further political concessions from the Sandinistas. Congress cut off U.S. military aid to the rebel army a year ago but has held the troops together with food and other non-lethal assistance.

Tuesday’s accord did not say how or when the estimated 9,000 Contras are to be disarmed or removed from Honduras. It simply called on the region’s five governments to work out a plan with “technical advice of U.N. specialized agencies” for repatriating those rebels who wish to return to Nicaragua under an amnesty law or relocating them as refugees in third countries.

The five presidents also endorsed an appeal by their foreign ministers last week that the United Nations organize mobile teams of unarmed military observers from Spain, Canada and West Germany to police the security provision of the 1987 accord. That provision bars any country from harboring guerrillas who attack another country.

The summit produced no agreement on steps to end wars waged by Marxist guerrillas against the Salvadoran and Guatemalan governments.

But, in a communique read by Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte, the five leaders urged “all sectors, especially insurrectional forces . . . to join the constitutional political process in each country.”

Urged to Stop Aiding Rebels

At the same time, it urged governments inside and outside the region to stop aiding guerrilla forces, “except for humanitarian aid that contributes to the aims” of the peace process.

This was clearly an appeal to the U.S. Congress that future non-lethal aid to the Contras, whose current funding expires March 31, should be channeled toward the effort to dismantle their Honduran camps rather than to maintain them as a fighting force.

President Jose Azcona Hoyo of Honduras, which borders Nicaragua and has played host to the Contra movement since the CIA organized it in 1981, urged the United States to respect the accord.

The Contras began retreating to their camps in Honduras after military aid was cut off last February. The exodus accelerated when a March 23 cease-fire accord with the Sandinistas, calling for rebel disarmament in return for political reforms, broke down in June.

Azcona said the presence in Honduras of an irregular army with no clear future “is a problem that has afflicted us for some time.”

Proposal by Ortega

The agreement to remove the Contras stemmed from a proposal made to Azcona last week by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. He proposed that the Honduran army disarm the rebels or give that task to an international commission representing the Red Cross, the United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS).

Azcona said Tuesday that he had been unwilling to accept the proposal without support from other Central American leaders. With their backing and help from the United Nations, he said, “the solution to this problem should be easy.”

Honduras, one of Washington’s closest allies in the region, has repeatedly questioned the Sandinistas’ intentions to comply with the 1987 peace pact’s commitments to amnesty, free elections and other political freedoms.

But Tuesday, Azcona said Ortega’s pledges “show we are advancing in the right direction.”

“Until Jan. 20, the Reagan Administration exerted every pressure it could to keep the Contras alive, but with the Bush Administration, things have changed,” said Paul S. Reichler, an American lawyer here to advise the Sandinista delegation. “Now the Hondurans felt free to act in their own interest. There was no red light from Washington.

“This summit is a complete success,” Reichler said. “It constitutes the final burial of the Contras.”

The bargaining during the summit, which was held in a Pacific beachfront hotel, took up where the Sandinista-Contra peace talks broke down last year. Ortega agreed to some, but not all, of the Contras’ demands.

The Contras had sought immediate amnesty for all of the estimated 3,000 political prisoners the Sandinistas say they are holding. On Tuesday, Ortega promised to free only those members of the former National Guard not judged by the OAS Human Rights Commission to have committed “crimes against humanity.”

Reichler said that means that all but about 100 of the 1,744 guardsmen who were imprisoned after their 1979 defeat by the Sandinista guerrillas will be released as soon as the OAS panel issues its report. He said the remaining political prisoners, most of them suspected Contra supporters, will be freed as the rebel camps are dismantled.

Ease Other Curbs

As he did in talks with the Contras, Ortega promised to negotiate with internal opposition parties to change the electoral and press laws. But his promise of equal time in the state-run media fell short of a Contra demand that opposition groups get their own television station.

Ortega also promised to allow three radio news programs shut down by his government last year to begin broadcasting again, but he did not say whether a new press law would abolish the government’s censorship powers, a key Contra demand.

The Contras had not demanded early elections, but Ortega agreed to advance them from November, 1990, to early next year--by Feb. 25 at the latest--at the behest of Arias and other Central American leaders.

Under Tuesday’s agreement, Nicaraguan opposition parties will be given “equal participation” with the Sandinistas on an electoral council now being formed. They will have four months to organize for a six-month campaign. The OAS and U.N. secretaries general are invited to send observers to judge the fairness of the entire electoral process.

The election will be for a president, vice president, 96-seat National Assembly and municipal councils. Those elected would take office “virtually immediately” after the election, Reichler said.

Contra leaders tried to put the best face on the accord. Adolfo Calero called it “a triumph for us . . . a direct result of our struggle.” He expressed skepticism that the Sandinistas would comply but did not rule out returning to take part in elections.

“Any agreement based on promises by Ortega is like trying to leash a dog with a sausage,” said Calero, who was barred from the summit site and met reporters across the road. But he added: “We are ready to exchange our weapons for democracy if the resolution signed today is translated into reality in Nicaragua.”

Roger Guevara, secretary of the Nicaraguan Democratic Coordinate, the main internal opposition group, said, “It’s not the date but the conditions for elections” that matter. He said Ortega apparently wanted elections moved up “before the Sandinistas drown in their own problems,” but he said six months is enough for a campaign if the rules are fair.

The five presidents agreed to review the peace process at a summit in Honduras--their fourth since May, 1986--but set no date.