Most Contras to Keep Arms, Leader Says : Nicaragua: The rebel who agreed to end the war wants the Sandinista army to disband as ‘an equal step.’

The Contra leader who agreed to end the Nicaraguan war said Saturday that most of his men will keep their guns after Sandinista President Daniel Ortega leaves office next month and asserted that the rebels will press his successor to disband the Sandinista-led army.

“We have taken the first step, and now the Sandinistas have to take an equal step and demobilize their military apparatus,” said Oscar Sovalbarro, the chief rebel negotiator of Friday’s historic peace accord, which obliges all Contras based in Honduras to lay down their weapons by April 20.

But rather than meet that deadline, he said, most of the 12,000 rebels will gather with their rifles in safety zones inside Nicaragua and seek new talks with President-elect Violeta Barrios de Chamorro’s aides on terms for disarming and rejoining civilian life.

His remarks, in a telephone interview from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, signal an apparent hardening of the rebel position since Friday’s accord. They indicate that the U.S.-backed Contras, despite their pledge to end an eight-year war that cost 30,000 lives and contributed to the Sandinistas’ election defeat, might be around longer than Ortega or Chamorro’s pro-American coalition would like.

“This (agreement) certainly sounds like progress,” said a European diplomat, “but I would be a little cautious about proclaiming the end of the Contras yet.”

Sovalbarro, a member of the rebels’ general staff, signed the agreement in the Honduran capital Friday with two aides to Chamorro, who defeated Ortega in last month’s elections. Ortega immediately embraced the accord, saying it means “there will not be a single armed Contra in Nicaragua” the day he leaves office April 25.

But Contra leaders, diplomats and officials of Chamorro’s National Opposition Union noted that the accord spelled out no deadline or conditions for disarming rebels inside Nicaragua, and they predicted difficulty in achieving that goal.

For one thing, hundreds and perhaps thousands of armed rebels have abandoned their Honduran border camps since the Feb. 25 election. Sandinista and rebel leaders agree that as many as half the guerrillas are now inside Nicaragua, with more expected by the April 20 disarmament deadline in Honduras.

“They see the end coming but think it shameful to surrender their weapons in a foreign country,” said Luis Adan Fley, a former rebel official. “They want to come back like winners.”

The mass infiltration has already strained an informal cease-fire that must hold if the agreed-upon separation of Sandinista and Contra forces is to work.

In the latest reported violation, about 100 Contras ambushed a Sandinista army truck near Yali, in northern Nicaragua, just as Friday’s peace talks were ending. Twelve Sandinista soldiers died and 10 people were wounded, the Defense Ministry said.

Under the accord, the Contras are to concentrate in safety zones drawn up in consultation with the Sandinista army, which will pull its forces out of those areas. The arrangement, and the disarmament of Contras in Honduras, is to be supervised by U.N. troops.

Ortega expressed concern Friday over the absence of the top rebel commander, Israel Galeano, from the peace talks. He said that Galeano, who is known as Commander Franklin, might be waiting to take command of Contras who reject the accord and want to keep fighting.

Honduran and U.S. officials, who worked behind the scenes to achieve Friday’s accord, offered Galeano a plane to return from a speaking tour in the United States and join the talks. But Galeano refused, even after Honduran President Rafael L. Callejas threatened to bar him from the country, a participant in the talks said.

“Franklin wasn’t sure a (disarmament) agreement would be accepted by the rank and file now,” the participant said. “He wanted to wait until Dona Violeta took office so he could have more leverage.”

Sovalbarro said the entire rebel leadership gave him authority to negotiate. He said the Contras are ready to move into safety zones “as soon as possible” because “we don’t want to be an obstacle to the transition” from Ortega’s rule to Chamorro’s.

But how quickly they disarm is another question.

Antonio Lacayo and Emilio Alvarez Montalban, Chamorro’s aides, said Contra negotiators in Friday’s talks mentioned no conditions for turning over their weapons, other than the presence of an international peacekeeping force to verify a cease-fire and guarantee their safety.

“If those two conditions are created tomorrow, then the Contras can be demilitarized at once,” Lacayo said.

A U.N. official in Managua, Lauri Vaccari, said a peacekeeping force could arrive “within a few weeks.”

But Sovalbarro said Saturday that the rebels want “deep discussions” with Chamorro’s aides on the future of the Sandinista military before they disarm.

Asked to spell out his conditions, the rebel leader said only that the army, dominated by Sandinista officers, “must be dismantled.” He added: “The new government says it wants to disarm the army. How it’s going to do this we don’t know. We’re not setting this as a condition, but we trust that Dona Violeta as commander in chief will have enough authority to do it.”

In fact, Chamorro’s aides have promised nothing more than to reduce the 75,000-strong army and admit that they cannot even do that until the Contras disarm.

Other rebel leaders said their willingness to disarm has been dampened by the government’s distribution of arms to thousands of Sandinista civilian supporters since the election.

Ortega gave mixed signals on that practice Friday night. At a news conference, he said that if the peace accord is fulfilled, “there will be no reason for many peasants who are now armed in war zones to retain their weapons.”

Later, however, he faced a crowd of Sandinista Youth celebrating the end of the war and shouting “Ortega! Ortega! Don’t surrender our arms!” He replied: “You can have full assurances that the arms will remain in the hands of the people.”

Despite the obstacles, diplomats and officials on both sides believe the accord is a milestone because it commits the Contras to an inevitable, if ill-defined, process of disbanding.

They credit the impending expiration of U.S. non-lethal aid to the Contras on April 30, pressure by the Honduran government and mediation by Nicaraguan Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo with obliging rebel leaders to take that step.