Ortega Threat on Contras Carries Risks for Regime : News ANALYSIS

By first vowing to end Nicaragua’s cease-fire and then seeming to back away, President Daniel Ortega has managed at least to refocus attention on a problem the world had almost forgotten--the Contras.

But whether or not all-out war resumes, Ortega’s move is a risk that could shift the onus for any new fighting from the U.S.-backed rebels onto his own government and undermine faith in an upcoming election that is crucial for reviving this nation’s shattered economy.

The Contras were shunted off Washington’s agenda last spring by a bipartisan agreement to keep their army intact but passive through that election, scheduled for Feb. 25. Four Central American presidents then joined Ortega in signing an Aug. 7 accord to “demobilize” the Honduras-based rebels but offered no means to enforce it.

With the war reduced to skirmishes, few outsiders cared that up to 10,000 rebels remained under arms.

In recent weeks, however, the Contras have filtered into Nicaragua by the hundreds, warned rural people not to vote for Ortega, assassinated a candidate of the ruling Sandinistas in a small-town election and, in a sharp escalation eight days ago, killed 18 army reservists being trucked to register to vote, according to government officials and independent monitors.

Ortega now faces demands by the Sandinista army to end a 19-month-old cease-fire. One of his aides said the army has proposed a blitzkrieg to drive the Contras back to Honduras by December, hoping that the final three months of the election campaign can be peaceful.

But when Ortega used a summit meeting with President Bush and 14 other Western Hemisphere leaders in Costa Rica last Friday to announce a truce suspension as of Wednesday, he was ostracized for overreacting and suspected of maneuvering to cancel the vote.

Since then, Ortega has fudged that impending date and downgraded his vow to “hit the Contras hard” from a decision to a threat. Speaking in the town of Rivas on Sunday, he insisted “we cannot keep turning the other cheek.” But he also said that he is “analyzing the situation” while seeking firmer diplomatic support for disbanding the Contras, and added that he will announce a decision Tuesday.

“The idea was a mistake,” an aide to Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez said Sunday. “We’re still hoping he will back out of it.”

While the Contra attacks have brought the delicate process of peace through elections to a crisis, the burden of solving it seems to have fallen on Ortega. U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar said Saturday that he was “deeply worried” about “the inherent danger of renewed combat” here just days before the Security Council is to vote on a plan by the Central American presidents to station U.N. truce observers throughout the region.

“This is a tricky situation for Ortega,” said a foreign election observer in Managua. “The Sandinistas have right on their side, but as the government in power, they have more responsibility to keep the war from revving up. The Contras are beyond the law, but if the cease-fire breaks down, the government would be the villain of the piece.”

Signs of a government offensive are already showing. Reporters saw Sandinista military forces in trucks and jeeps take up positions on three sides of a rural Contra stronghold in Jinotega province Friday and then heard heavy fighting. Ten Contras were reported killed in a clash last week in Chontales.

Diplomats and human rights monitors say a lightning offensive would be risky because once begun, it would be hard to shut off. They recall that the Contras waged their fiercest attacks against Sandinista civilian targets when the army tried to drive them over the border during a yearlong suspension of U.S. military aid in 1985-86.

They also believe that the psychological effect of Ortega’s announcement could intensify the fighting or intimidate opposition candidates even if the army does not launch a major offensive.

“It would have been more effective to step up their counterattacks without declaring the cease-fire over,” an Asian diplomat said. “Ortega’s reasons are obviously more than military.”

Indeed, Sandinista officials said Ortega made his announcement during the summit to dramatize his anger over continuing Contra hostility.

Since the cease-fire took hold in March, 1988, Ortega said, rebel attacks have left 736 dead and 1,153 wounded.

“We hear that George Bush has pressure from the right wing in his country not to abandon the Contras,” said a Foreign Ministry official. “Don’t forget, we have pressure from our citizens to get rid of them. Outside Nicaragua everybody wants to pretend that the war is over. We have a lot of grieving mothers to prove otherwise.”

As in the past, however, Ortega miscalculated the international outcry against what, in political terms at home, seemed like a reasonable position. In 1985, for example, he visited Moscow to seek help in the face of declining economic assistance from the West. The trip came on the heels of a congressional vote to suspend Contra aid and prompted shocked lawmakers to reverse their decision.

The spectacle of Ortega in army uniform at a summit honoring 100 years of democracy in pacifist Costa Rica, announcing a return to war, was equally shocking to the region’s other leaders. Nobody supported him, and a joke circulated that he had come in a costume thinking it was already Halloween.

“One can question the timing and the handling of (the announcement),” said Paul S. Reichler, a Washington attorney for the Sandinista government. “But the fact remains that the Contras are on a rampage. They are killing people.”

A Sandinista official conceded: “That message didn’t come through as clear as Ortega hoped.”

Despite his considerable efforts to make peace with the Contras and hold internationally supervised elections, Ortega has been frustrated by lingering distrust abroad and a failure to secure Western aid to rebuild his destitute country. His recent tour of Mideast oil states gained no pledges of petroleum. A special conference between Nicaragua and potential Western donors set for this fall has been postponed until after the election.

In addition, the Soviet Union has suspended arms shipments to Nicaragua and obliged East Germany to do likewise.

“The Sandinistas have a strong feeling of isolation these days,” the Asian diplomat said. “Because of this, they cannot sit quietly on the sidelines. When things go against them, they have a psychological need to do something drastic to attract attention.”

Although one of three polls published last week shows Ortega trailing his election rival and another shows him barely ahead, the diplomat and many other observers here doubt that Ortega wants to sabotage the election, as Secretary of State James A. Baker III suggested. They said Ortega knows his country cannot afford the diplomatic isolation that would result.

But he is eager to exploit the new fighting to portray Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, his chief opponent, as the candidate of aggression. In Costa Rica, he distributed a letter purportedly signed by Enrique Bermudez, the Contra commander, expressing support for Chamorro, the U.S.-supported presidential nominee of a 14-party opposition coalition. She has refused to call for disbanding the Contras or to condemn their recent attacks, saying she does not believe Sandinista accounts of the war.

While this strategy strikes a responsive chord with Sandinista supporters, the likelihood of renewed warfare alarms others.

“All we hear from Ortega is that we want peace, we want peace,” said Emilio Villarreal, 56, who attended the president’s speech Sunday at a baseball stadium in Rivas. “If that’s what he wants, why doesn’t he negotiate with the Contras instead of fighting them?”

Others in the town, which is far from the war zone but feels the war’s economic devastation, were confused by Ortega’s remarks. They thought he was talking about an end to the fighting, not an end to the cease-fire.

“I’m happy to hear it’s ending,” said Pablo Ulloa, 25. “We’re tired of the war.”