Senior Contra Leader Survives Ouster Attempt

The senior commander of the all-but-defeated Contra army, Enrique Bermudez, has survived an ouster attempt by a rebel faction more willing to come to terms with Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, U.S. and rebel officials say.

The power struggle, in which the State Department backed a group of young field commanders, has left the Nicaraguan rebel movement more firmly in the grip of an old guard with close ties to its original mentor, the CIA.

As a result, the rebel army of about 10,000 men appears to be more isolated than ever from its political allies in Washington and Nicaragua, and more inclined to continue engaging the Sandinistas in armed skirmishing with little or no outside help.

‘Has Come Full Circle’

“The resistance has come full circle, back to its early days as a right-wing clique that the Nicaraguan people do not support,” said a civilian Contra involved in the ill-fated conspiracy. “They have no moral right to send peasant boys to die for a cause that is facing extinction.”

The demise of the insurgency, already deprived of U.S. military aid, came nearer last month when five Central American presidents set a Dec. 5 deadline for closing the rebels’ bases in Honduras and called for talks to speed their disarmament and return to Nicaragua.

After weeks of infighting in Washington, Miami and the main rebel camp in Yamales, Bermudez emerged last week as head of a new five-man negotiating team to lead the rebels through this period.

But in an interview here, the 56-year-old commander signaled his defiance of the summit accord and said he has nothing to talk to the Sandinistas about.

“How can we negotiate when the jails in Nicaragua are full of our supporters?” he asked. “We are not going to make a list of demands. The Sandinistas have promised a democracy. They know what they have to do. We will wait for them to comply. . . . Meanwhile, we can fight on without the United States.”

Since the CIA helped create it in the early 1980s, the Contra organization has been riven almost constantly by factional feuds.

The Contras’ founding fathers, including Bermudez, were officers in the unpopular National Guard of President Anastasio Somoza, while many joining later were veterans of the Sandinista-led rebellion that toppled Somoza in 1979.

U.S. policy makers forged an uneasy alliance between the two groups to give the movement a pluralist face and coax aid from Congress. But since the Sandinistas agreed to hold elections next Feb. 25, the State Department has pushed exiled Contra civilians to go home and campaign, while trying to bring a new generation of military commanders to the fore.

Before last month’s Central American summit, six rebel officers and two civilians with no ties to the Somoza regime were sent on a lobbying tour of the region, then invited to Washington by Bernard Aronson, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs.

Good-Faith Talks

State Department officials touted this “political-military commission” as the new Contra leadership. Its members said they were willing to engage in good-faith talks with the Sandinistas to achieve personal security guarantees for disarmed foot soldiers wanting to go home, rebel officials said.

In what one official called “the last stroke of the conspiracy,” a council of commanders in Yamales voted Sept. 2 to break with the movement’s Miami-based political directorate, a seven-man body that includes Bermudez.

But Bermudez, who lives in Miami, flew to Yamales four days later and reasserted his authority in a tense, four-hour showdown with 28 field commanders, according to rebel and U.S. officials.

“The political-military commission represented a new face for the resistance, but the old guard struck out to destroy it,” said a frustrated U.S. official.

Calero a Notable Exclusion

Hours after Bermudez left camp, the commanders elected the new five-man leadership, one far to the right of the Miami-based directorate that it eclipses. Notably excluded was Adolfo Calero, his rival on that body.

Chosen with Bermudez were Aristides Sanchez, 46, his closest civilian ally, and three guerrilla officers--Jose Benito Bravo, 45, who is known by the nom de guerre Mack; Jose Francisco Ruiz, 37, known as Renato; and Oscar Manuel Sovalbarro, 28, known as Ruben.

Bermudez, Bravo and Ruiz are holdovers from the old National Guard, and Sanchez was a member of Somoza’s Liberal Party. Three civilians named to advise the panel served the Somoza regime.

Among the officers backed by the State Department, only Sovalbarro was included in the new leadership.

The clearest sign of the department’s failure was the election of Bravo, the Contra intelligence chief. A rebel military court ordered him expelled from the movement last March for covering up a murder. He was later reinstated, in defiance of threats by U.S. officials to cut the rebels’ current allotment of $49.7 million in non-lethal aid.

Bermudez Aided by CIA

Contra officials said that the CIA, which wields influence with rebels in Honduras, helped Bermudez survive by refusing to line up with the State Department against him.

“The State Department underestimated Bermudez’s power,” said Donald Castillo, a civilian in the rebel faction favored by the de partment. “What happens in Washington is one thing, but what happens in Honduras is beyond the department’s control.”

Although Bermudez spends little time with the troops, he controls them by managing $400,000 a month in U.S. stipends to their families in Honduras, rebel officials say.

In Miami, his allies control $100,000 per month in CIA-channeled political funds and thus can limit activity by his rivals. One supporter of the young commanders, Ernesto Palacios, was fired from the Washington staff last month on grounds of misspending funds and locking a rival faction out of the office.

“The dispute was settled in the good old style of Nicaraguan politics--with bribes, isolation and threats,” one rebel leader said.

Bermudez prevailed with the apparent acquiescence of Israel Galeano, who was involved in the revolt but retained his job as chief of staff in the Yamales camp, rebel leaders said.

Bermudez played down the revolt, calling the panel of young commanders an “ad hoc group” with an expired lobbying mandate. His allies said the junior officers dropped their challenge because they realized they were being manipulated by the State Department.

The Central American presidents’ agreement to disarm the rebels before next year’s Nicaraguan election, rather than afterward, was a political defeat for both factions and may have blurred the line between them. It also stirred common resentment against the Bush Administration for failing to prevent the summit outcome.

“This is not the time to fight over who used to be a Somocista and who used to be a Sandinista,” said Luis Adan Fley, a rebel officer who fought against Somoza but supports Bermudez. “Nobody wants to disarm before the elections. We decided it was better to have these hard-liners out front for now, to make any agreement impossible.

“If the Sandinistas steal the election and there is cause to continue the war, then we can talk about new faces,” he said.

Officials of the United Nations and the Organization of American States, who are to supervise the regional peace accord, began meeting separately with Sandinista and rebel leaders last week to discuss their mission to collect the rebels’ weapons.

Aware of feuding among Contras, the officials asked to hear a full range of views at Yamales. But Bermudez said it would be impossible for them to visit the camp at this time.

Times staff writer Doyle McManus contributed to this article from Washington.