Chamorro Visits Local Expatriates : Diplomacy: Nicaraguan president appeals for patience as she tries to rebuild country. She also pays a call to ex-President Reagan.

Nicaraguan President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, on her way to Asia and Europe seeking financial aid for her war-torn country, stopped in Los Angeles on Saturday for an emotional reunion with hundreds of expatriates.

She also paid a brief call to former President Ronald Reagan, speaking with him privately in his Century City office before addressing about 400 exiles at the Century Plaza Hotel.

Singing their homeland’s national anthem with tears in their eyes and tiny, blue-and-white flags in their hands, the refugees, most of whom fled the Sandinista regime, gathered to meet the first Nicaraguan president chosen in open, competitive elections.

Many in the smartly dressed crowd of attorneys, engineers and business people said they hoped to someday return to Nicaragua now that the Marxist-led government has been voted from office, while others seemed overjoyed simply to be able to cheer the woman who defeated the Sandinista National Liberation Front.

“We think that Mrs. Chamorro is the only hope we have for the Nicaraguan people and we are behind her 100%,” said Annabel Hurtado of Hacienda Heights.

Chamorro, who upset Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega with 55% of the vote, was on her way to Japan and Europe to seek financial aid and to lay the foundation for possible trade and investment agreements. Accompanying the president were her daughter, Cristiana Chamorro de Lacayo, and Secretary of State Enrique Dreyfus.

Her overnight stop in Los Angeles included 30 minutes with Reagan, who told Chamorro, “Rest assured, I’ll do everything I can to help you,” according to Bee Canterbury Lavery, Mayor Tom Bradley’s chief of protocol.

Bradley met Chamorro at Los Angeles International Airport, giving her a key to the city with the second-largest Nicaraguan community in the United States. About 200,000 Nicaraguan exiles live in Southern California, according to the Nicaraguan Consulate; about 30,000 live in Los Angeles, said Douglas Madrigal, a Granada Hills executive who heads a group called the Nicaraguan Relief Society.

“We are happy because there was too much dislocation in the society,” said Madrigal, “and because the previous regime, the Sandinistas, dragged the country down the economic drain.”

Chamorro told reporters that she inherited a country so bankrupt it lacked even seats, desks or cars for government workers. “We inherited a country like a cobweb, in a tremendous mess,” she said.

She said she hopes to reduce an $11-billion debt through a combination of aid, trade agreements and tourism to be discussed while visiting Japan, Germany, Belgium and Czechoslovakia. A devout Catholic, Chamorro also compared her nation’s myriad problems to “a never-ending rosary of laments.”

Chamorro urged her countrymen not to flock home until the economy is restored because right now it could not support them. She also talked about a recent proposal to the U.S. State Department that would afford refugees the right to work for three years in the United States, giving Nicaragua more time to stabilize. Supporters seem to accept that for now.

“She is trying to work on ashes to bring back an old fire,” said teacher Marion Valladares of Burbank.