Contras to Urge U.S. to Help Shape New Accord : Nicaraguan Rebels Not Consulted on Plan, Seek Delay of Disarmament Move

SAN SALVADOR —  Facing united regional pressure to disarm and take part in elections, Contra leaders said Wednesday they will ask the United States to help shape the terms of a new Central American plan to end their insurgency in Nicaragua.

The region’s four U.S. allies agreed Tuesday to draft such a plan within 90 days, in exchange for a pledge given by Nicaragua’s Sandinista leaders to hold fair elections by next February. The accord--signed by the presidents of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua--would oblige the Contras to abandon their sanctuaries in Honduras, but it set no timetable.

Rebel leaders were not consulted about the accord in advance, not even by their Honduran hosts, and were caught off guard. Having negotiated a cease-fire with the Sandinistas last March only to watch it break down, they voiced varying degrees of skepticism that the latest agreement will produce a final settlement of the seven-year conflict.

“This is a new ballgame,” said rebel leader Adolfo Calero, who negotiated the failed cease-fire. “Something might come of it. We won’t go in and provoke a situation to give the Sandinistas an excuse to back out. We’re not rejecting it, but we’re not enthusiastically promoting it.”

Calero and two other Contra leaders interviewed Wednesday had no formal response to the accord. But they joined in urging the Bush Administration to try to persuade Central American leaders to delay a disarmament deadline until after the elections.

“Nobody can force our fighters to leave the camps unless there is a plan backed by the five presidents and by Washington,” said Alfredo Cesar, the Contra leader who spoke most favorably of the accord.

U.S. ‘Can Veto Any Plan’

The region’s five presidents agreed to ask the United Nations for technical help in devising a plan to disarm and resettle the Contras. But the United States is expected to have a decisive influence over any plan, if only because no Central American country is capable of paying for it. Calero estimated it will cost at least $150 million.

“In the final analysis, Washington can veto any plan if the Sandinistas don’t live up to their promises,” Cesar said.

Under terms of the summit accord, Nicaragua’s 1990 elections will be held under international supervision by Feb. 25, nine months ahead of schedule. Half the seats on an electoral council will be reserved for opposition parties. Laws giving the Sandinistas censorship powers, electoral advantages and a monopoly of television air time will be amended through talks with opposition leaders. About half of Nicaragua’s 3,150 political prisoners will be released.

Those steps, pledged at the summit by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, are to be met by April 25, followed by four months of political party organization and a six-month election campaign.

Cesar said Ortega’s commitments were “much less abstract” than those offered by the Sandinistas in cease-fire talks last year. If they are met, Cesar said he will return to Nicaragua this spring to try to help unite the 14 opposition parties into a single electoral front.

Citing recent polls showing a majority of Nicaraguans uncommitted to any party, Cesar said there is “a tremendous opportunity for a united opposition.” He said the Sandinistas were forced by diplomatic isolation to call early elections and could not easily cheat.

The apparent breakthrough in the stalled Nicaraguan peace efforts came as President Bush’s aides were still forming a policy toward Nicaragua. The United States has financed the Contras since 1981, but Congress cut off their military funds a year ago, forcing the rebels to retreat to Honduras.

The summit accord, which called for repatriating the Contras to Nicaragua or settling them as refugees in other countries, is expected to give liberals in Congress a strong argument for limiting new non-lethal aid to that purpose.

Returning home Tuesday night, Ortega called the agreement “a Valentine’s Day victory for the Nicaraguan people.” He added, “We who are lovers of peace have achieved a decisive victory. We have given a coup de grace to war.”

The pro-Sandinista newspaper El Nuevo Diario headlined its story: “The End of the Contras.”

Plan Should Aid Bush

But rebel leaders said the 90-day period for drafting the peace plan should give the Bush Administration time to set its own conditions for dispersing the Contras and to seek support for them among Democrats.

Radio Liberacion, the rebel radio station, said in its Wednesday morning broadcast to 11,000 rebel troops: “The Nicaraguan Resistance has always said we will not lay down our arms until there is an irreversible process of democratization. That is still our objective.”

Enrique Bermudez, commander of the rebel army, said there cannot be “full democracy” until the Sandinistas make new concessions, such as ending the ruling party’s control of the army, freeing all political prisoners and abolishing neighborhood defense councils.

“We’re asking the Bush Administration not to deny us sanctuary before Ortega meets these conditions,” Bermudez said. “We’re not afraid of a political struggle, but once our forces are dismantled, the Sandinistas could do as they please.”

If the Contras are forced from Honduras, Bermudez said, they might return to fight inside Nicaragua with what little ammunition they have or convert their rural insurgency into an urban guerrilla movement.

Calero, 57, the senior Contra leader, said he agreed with such a strategy but he sounded less convinced.

“At age 50, I looked forward to an easy life, to retirement and looking after my investments,” he said. “Seven years later, I’m even less eager for war. I would be very happy to end it. But we have to be very careful how we deal with the lives of thousands of fighters. We must remain a viable force up to the last minute.”

Opposition leaders in Nicaragua are equally skeptical of the Sandinistas’ intentions. Miriam Arguello, a Conservative Party leader, said that even with a free press, anti-Sandinista forces need more than four months to organize for the election campaign “after years of being totally repressed and intimidated.”

Some opposition leaders said the Sandinistas may have agreed to an early vote out of fear that the country’s war-battered economy would only get worse if they waited.

But Cesar said the rebels also preferred early elections to end the uncertainty over their future.