U.S. Contra Formula Gets Regional Support

The Bush Administration has won support from Nicaragua’s neighbors for a new American plan to keep anti-Sandinista rebels idled in Honduras, with only non-military aid, until after elections in Nicaragua next February.

For the first time in nearly three years of efforts by Central Americans to pacify their own isthmus, officials of these countries say, the United States has removed the Contra war as a divisive regional issue and put the focus on the Sandinistas’ promises of greater political freedom in Nicaragua.

“After years of shouting in the wilderness, we have been heard,” Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, the prime mover of the regional peace effort, told reporters this week. “Finally, we are seeing the end of a policy of war and support for a policy of peace.”

Uncertainty over the future of the Contras prompted the five Central American presidents to agree Feb. 14 to draft a plan by mid-May to close the rebel camps in Honduras. The Honduran president, Jose Azcona Hoyo, had said he wanted the Contras out of his country early this year.

The presidents were operating in the policy vacuum of the U.S. presidential transition. But the new Contra aid agreement, announced a week ago by President Bush and congressional leaders of both parties, appears to have moved much of the initiative back to Washington and given the Contras a longer lease on life.

One sign of the shift came Friday when Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel d’Escoto failed to win the support of any of his four Central American counterparts on a plan to close the Contra camps by August.

As a result of the U.S. plan, which would keep about 11,000 Contras fed, clothed and sheltered but out of battle, Honduran officials say they are now less concerned about the security threat of an abandoned rebel army to their own national security and thus more willing to extend the rebels’ stay in camps near the Nicaraguan border.

In addition, Costa Rican officials say they will work closely with Washington to monitor the Sandinistas’ compliance with the February peace accord, which obliges Nicaragua to make legal changes guaranteeing fair and open elections. Arias is to discuss the Nicaraguan question when he visits the White House on Tuesday.

$4.5 Million a Month

Nicaragua has been alone among the region’s five countries in denouncing the American plan, which calls for $4.5 million a month in aid to the Contras for the next 11 months. President Daniel Ortega has called it a “terrorist package” that “reaffirms the policy that the strong may do whatever they wish.”

While spared of major attacks since the Congress cut off the rebels’ military aid 13 months ago, the Sandinistas seem obsessed with dissolving the insurgent army. They have proposed a mid-August deadline for closing the Contra camps and relocating the rebels in Nicaragua or in third countries. The Sandinistas assert that any U.S. aid that keeps the Contra army intact as a potential military threat violates the February accord.

But the foreign ministers of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, who met here Thursday and Friday with their Nicaraguan counterpart, rejected that interpretation. Officials of the four countries stressed that the Contras’ departure from Honduras must be voluntary and dependent on the evolution of a more democratic system in Nicaragua.

“The Contras cannot be forced by any government to go back to Nicaragua unless conditions there improve,” said Ricardo Acevedo, El Salvador’s foreign minister. He noted that the American aid is flexible and could be used for relocating those Contras who choose to disarm.

“This process could take one month or one year or two years, depending on the will of the parties in conflict,” said Honduran Foreign Minister Carlos Lopez Contreras. “We cannot judge how long. It must be the result of talks inside and outside of the region.”

Other officials in Honduras, which dismayed Washington by signing the February agreement, are now saying publicly that the Contras should stay at least through the Nicaraguan election.

The foreign ministers debated the Contras’ future in the final hour of their two-day meeting here. The discussion broke down, participants said, when Honduras proposed inviting Contra leaders and U.S. officials to give their views, and Nicaragua objected.

The Sandinistas, who wanted the Contras at the top of the agenda, accused Honduras of stalling. The issue was referred to a technical commission that will meet in two weeks.

“We saw no interest in moving forward on demobilizing the Contras, and that concerns us,” said Victor Hugo Tinoco, Nicaragua’s deputy foreign minister.

But the ministers made progress on two fronts. They gave formal approval to a U.N.-supervised peacekeeping force that would patrol the region’s troubled borders. And they agreed to resume talks April 22, after an 18-month lull, on mutual arms reductions by the armies of the five nations.

The mobile peace force, first agreed to last December, would be made up of unarmed soldiers from Canada, West Germany and Spain. Under the expected agreement, the five countries would ask U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to send a mission to the region to decide how many men and vehicles are needed. A Costa Rican official said the force could be operating as early as June.

At U.N. headquarters in New York City, sources confirmed that the foreign ministers had forwarded their request to the secretary general. A U.N. official who declined to be identified by name said the peacekeeping force was likely to be only 100 members initially, so as to hold down costs.

Sponsors are confident that the 15-nation Security Council will approve the request because of the wide support for ending Central America’s regional conflict. Following the council’s endorsement, the plan must be put before the 159 members of the General Assembly, who will have to vote assessments to finance the force.

Central American officials said one role of the peace force will be to settle any dispute that may arise over who initiates armed conflict in Nicaragua, where Contras and Sandinistas frequently denounce each other for violating a year-old cease fire. Under the American aid plan, which is expected to win prompt approval by Congress, the rebels are barred from staging military attacks.

Costa Rican officials say this prohibition on the Contras helped seal Arias’ endorsement of the new U.S. policy, ending the pacifist president’s long-running feud with Washington over the war in Nicaragua.

U.S. Ambassador Deane Hinton said Arias, who was awarded the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, helped shape Washington’s new policy by arguing successfully that the war must be stopped to test the Sandinistas’ intentions.

“Today for the first time we have agreed on tactics,” Hinton said in an interview. “This Administration really wants to do what he (Arias) wants to do. But since the way we thought we had to do it didn’t work, now we will see if Oscar is right. That remains to be seen.”

Sandinista leaders acknowledge that moderates have come to the fore in Washington. But they say hard-liners could regain the upper hand in policy toward Nicaragua if the guerrilla war in El Salvador heats up.

In any case, Ortega has emphasized that he made his commitment to hold fair elections regardless of whether the Contras are demobilized first. Other Sandinistas say that, despite their public rhetoric, they can live with a large Contra presence in Honduras.

Times staff writer Don Shannon, in Washington, contributed to this report.