U.S. Pleased by Delay on Pact for Central America

The Reagan Administration said Tuesday that it is pleased at a decision by Central American nations to postpone the deadline for signing a proposed peace treaty and said the action shows new toughness by U.S. allies in the area in their negotiations with leftist-ruled Nicaragua.

Administration officials said the four allies--El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Guatemala--have now embraced the U.S. position that their neighbor, Nicaragua, must move its domestic political system toward genuine democracy if any peace treaty for the region is to succeed.

The presidents of all five Central American nations met last weekend in Esquipulas, Guatemala, and found disagreements so great that they decided they could not meet the scheduled June 6 deadline for signing a treaty.

The proposed pact is known as the Contadora Treaty, named for the Panamanian island where representatives of Mexico, Colombia, Panama and Venezuela met more than three years ago to mediate a treaty.

“The (Central American) summit demonstrated that there are real and profound differences between the democracies and the Nicaraguan government,” State Department spokesman Charles Redman said. “The summit made clear the view of the democracies that democratization is fundamental to peace in Central America. Commitments on security issues alone are not sufficient to bring peace.”

“There is more and more firmness in being willing to take on the Sandinistas on those questions,” a senior official told reporters at the White House. “This seems to be a new phenomenon, this kind of unity among the democracies.”

Nicaragua Remains Firm

The Contadora mediating group had set the June 6 deadline in hopes of forcing the Central Americans to come to a quick agreement on the issues. But the Reagan Administration urged its allies to stand firm, and the Sandinistas refused to budge on their demands--leading to last weekend’s impasse.

Delegations from the four U.S. allies, plus Nicaragua, Mexico, Colombia, Panama and Venezuela, gathered Tuesday in Panama City to try to break the impasse.

Nicaragua has asked for changes in the draft pact’s arms control rules to allow it to increase the size of its army for what it says are defensive purposes. The U.S. allies, on the other hand, have asked for more detailed provisions to make the implementation of the treaty evenhanded and verifiable.

Late Monday, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega offered a list of military hardware that his nation is willing to discuss limiting--including tanks, helicopters and planes--but he did not include a ceiling on troops. On Tuesday, Redman criticized the proposal as inadequate.

Waiting for Better Treaty

U.S. officials have long said that they prefer having no treaty to having one that does not meet their concerns, and they repeated that position Tuesday, dismissing the June 6 deadline as unimportant.

“Because some countries are pressuring to sign almost anything, they created an artificial deadline of June 6,” the senior official said. “We are pleased that people were not forced into action by an artificial deadline.”

The official, who spoke on condition that he not be identified, said the Administration is especially happy to see its Central American allies take a tough line on Nicaragua’s domestic political system.

Some Central Americans, and some U.S. officials, have long argued that the Sandinistas can be restrained from threatening their neighbors without demanding changes in Nicaragua’s internal system, demands that the Sandinistas have consistently rejected. But the U.S. allies at last weekend’s summit insisted that Nicaragua move toward more open democracy.

The senior U.S. official said that the Administration wants to see more precise language in the treaty to enforce the demand for democracy. He spoke to reporters after President Reagan met with Honduran President Jose Azcona Hoyo in Washington and reaffirmed a U.S. pledge to defend Honduras, Nicaragua’s northern neighbor, against “communist aggression.”

“The Nicaraguan communists . . . persist in repressing their own population and in backing the subversion of their democratic neighbors,” Reagan said at a ceremony with Azcona. “This endangers all of Latin America and ultimately the United States as well.”