CENTRAL AMERICA : Costa Ricans Baffled, Angry at Strained Relations With U.S.

This nation, with its tradition of civilian rule, fair elections and peaceful stability, has long been portrayed as the oasis of Central America--the apple in any U.S. government’s eye.

But a series of disputes with Washington in the last year, culminating in U.S. protests over Costa Rican labor laws, have strained bilateral relations and left Costa Rican officials baffled and angry.

After presidential elections earlier this month, a new government will take office May 8, and many Costa Ricans are hoping that the normally friendly tone between the two countries will be restored.

Part of the tension, some Costa Rican politicians say, is that the outgoing conservative government of President Rafael Calderon and his Social Christian Unity Party were close to the George Bush Administration and the Republican Party; many of the problems seemed to have popped up during the opening months of the Clinton Administration.

“There has been a series of small things that, seen altogether, do give the impression of a certain chilling of (bilateral) relations,” said Melvin Saenz, an official with the Foreign Ministry. The new Costa Rican government of President-elect Jose Maria Figueres “will be seen as more moderate than the Calderon government.”

The biggest problem erupted over Costa Rica’s labor code. The AFL-CIO, in a report last year, complained that the laws hinder unions from organizing and fighting for their rights. The American federation filed a formal protest with the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which launched an investigation.

At stake were millions of dollars in trade benefits that Costa Rica enjoys through the Generalized System of Preferences and the Caribbean Basin Initiative, which allow Costa Rican products into the U.S. market duty-free.

If the AFL-CIO complaint were to advance, Costa Rica would lose the privileges.

While some Costa Ricans agree that unions here are kept weak and activists are persecuted, especially in the booming textile maquiladoras, others argue that Costa Rica nevertheless has a freer labor system than other countries enjoying similar trade benefits, such as China.

Alarmed at what Calderon called the “arrogant attitude” of Washington, the Costa Rican government scrambled to lobby U.S. officials and to pass several labor reforms, including explicit guarantees of protection for union activists.

The tactic worked, at least for the time being. The AFL-CIO agreed to suspend its complaint last November but said it would continue to monitor several cases, including the firing of unionized pilots from the state airline.

For Costa Rica, the labor dispute flew in the face of the democratic image that San Jose likes to project, and it came on top of several other sources of friction.

The United States protested what it considered unfair compensation to a U.S. resident whose land in Costa Rica was expropriated, and the issue threatened to expand as 10 similar cases moved through the Costa Rican courts. At the behest of Sen. Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.), U.S. aid to Costa Rica and Inter-American Development Bank loans were suspended for 10 months, Saenz said.

And then there was the issue of extradition. The United States has been pressing for the extradition of several of its fugitive citizens who have taken refuge in Costa Rica. In a recent case, U.S. authorities spirited a fugitive out of Costa Rica under circumstances that the San Jose government considered suspicious.

Saenz, other officials and analysts say much of the apparent shift in relations may have more to do with Washington’s shift in focus--away from sustained interest in Central America. And a new emphasis on trade also factors into this, the analysts say.

U.S. governments needed Costa Rica during the 1980s. The Ronald Reagan and Bush Administrations pumped huge amounts of money into Costa Rica to shore up its economy as they worked to oust the Sandinista government of neighboring Nicaragua.

U.S. aid, which reached $400 million a year by the late 1980s, was just $15 million last year, according to the Foreign Ministry.