Contra Leader Says Movement Not Over

The Contras’ top-ranking military official said Friday that the Nicaraguan resistance movement is not over, despite a regional peace plan signed last week that calls on its members to lay down their arms.

“We’re going to wait and see what the Sandinistas will contribute . . . whether they’ll take in our interests or not,” said Col. Enrique Bermudez. “But at this point we see nothing to induce us to demobilize.”

The Contras’ military commander addressed a Capitol news conference during a two-day fund-raising tour that also included stops in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Bermudez said the peace plan signed by Central American presidents should have included a general amnesty. President Daniel Ortega has said the government would release up to 1,500 Nicaraguans who have been imprisoned for taking part in the Contra war or supporting the rebels. But Bermudez said there are about 5,000 rebels detained in Sandinista jails.

He also called on the Ortega government to reduce its military to a fifth of its current size. “To have 100,000 men in arms is . . . a sin,” he said.

Flanked by two other Contra leaders, the military commander said the Contra movement is not a creation of the CIA, as some critics contend. “It’s like saying that Solidarity was started by the United States,” he said, referring to Poland’s labor movement.

Bermudez said he could not predict how long the Contras would be able to battle the Communist-supported Sandinistas without U.S. military and political aide.

“There are tangible elements like supplies,” he said, “but there are intangible elements also, like the will to continue.” He said the will of the Nicaraguan resistance is “firm and strong.”

“We have very good friends in the United States, and we are confident they’ll continue to support us,” he said

Last week, Ortega and four other Central American presidents signed an agreement calling for the dismantling of the rebel camps in Honduras and the voluntary repatriation or relocation of the 6,000 to 10,000 rebels who remain there.

Honduran Foreign Minister Carlos Lopes Contreras has said that if the Contras do not agree to lay down their arms and leave his country by early December, as called for in the peace plan, “coercive methods” will have to be used to force them out. The Contras don’t want to demobilize until after next February’s elections.