Nicaraguan Team to Bargain With Gunmen at Embassy in Costa Rica

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica —  Top Nicaraguan officials arrived Tuesday to bargain directly with anti-Sandinista gunmen who seized the Nicaraguan Embassy here and hold the ambassador and up to 18 others hostage.

Nicaragua’s Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo failed earlier Tuesday to persuade the three men to give up their hostages and end a two-day standoff.

After an hourlong meeting with the cardinal, the hostage-takers issued a statement swearing they would leave the building “victorious or dead.”

Security Minister Luis Fishman said Nicaragua’s interior minister, Alfredo Mendieta, is leading a negotiation team. But Mendieta has already rejected the gunmen’s main demands, which include a $6-million ransom and the firing of Nicaragua’s Sandinista army chief and President Violeta Chamorro’s closest adviser.

He said the government “will not let itself be pressured to fire any functionary” and will give the attackers “not one centavo.”

The men stormed the embassy Monday with AK-47 assault rifles and other arms. There have been no reports of injuries to Ambassador Alfonso Robelo or the others held, most of them embassy workers.

Obando y Bravo said the men had gallons of gasoline and were heavily armed. The attackers identified themselves as the “Yolaina Command”--a reference to the small Nicaraguan town where anti-Sandinistas were massacred in early 1990.