Ortega Says He Will Free Some Linked to CIA

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said Tuesday that his government in the next few days will free a small number of political prisoners linked to the CIA.

Ortega, who is on a 10-nation tour of Western Europe, also said he believes that President Bush wants to take a softer line with Nicaragua but is having difficulty breaking with the past policies of former President Ronald Reagan, whom he called “a liar.”

“I think Bush is in favor of a negotiated solution, but he is so compromised and bound up with the previous policy that it’s not easy for him to move away from it in the short term,” Ortega said in an address to Socialist members of the European Community’s Parliament.

Ortega accused the United States of breaking international law and a Central American peace agreement by granting fresh humanitarian aid to the Contras fighting his Sandinista government.

Ortega said the Contras are continuing to attack Nicaraguan forces even though the U.S. aid is supposed to be non-lethal.

Despite this, “a handful of people linked to the CIA will be freed in the next few days,” Ortega said. He gave no other details.

Democratic reforms, the release of 1,900 political prisoners and the disbanding of the Contras are measures called for under a peace accord signed in February by El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

Ortega, wearing his customary khaki uniform, pledged that presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections to be held in Nicaragua next February, a key element of the peace plan for the war-ravaged region, will be fair and open to the country’s 18 opposition parties.

He formally invited the European Parliament to send observers. “They can talk to anyone, and at the end they can say whether it was a just process or not,” he said.

Nicaraguan opposition parties have rejected recent reforms of electoral and media laws, charging they give unfair advantages to the Sandinistas.

Ortega is visiting Europe to try to win support for Central American peace efforts and help in rebuilding a Nicaraguan economy devastated by the eight-year war against the Contras.

“I think Europe could be a major source of finance for Nicaragua,” he said. “We don’t have access to international (lending) bodies because the United States cut us off,” he said, referring to Washington’s economic embargo against Managua.

Earlier in the day, Ortega met Belgium’s King Baudouin and held talks with Prime Minister Wilfried Martens on the process of democratization in Central America and the European Community’s plans for a unified market after 1992.

A spokeswoman for Martens said further moves towards democracy in Nicaragua are a precondition for financial aid from Belgium.