al American peace accords in 18), our correspondent Eric orge in Managua, Nicaragua. l leadership of the Sandinista ne of the Nine Commanders of ole surviving founding he FSLN.
Regardless of negotiations, the Reagan administration's point of view will always in conflict with ours. Nonetheless, we must find a means for coexistence. We take the interests of the
United States into consideration, even if they see them in a way that is quite out of line with reality
They are afraid that Soviet bases will be established in Nicaragua. All right, that is a concrete point on which we can come to an agreement. We can offer a pledge about that. However, they feel perfectly free to set up American bases everywhere it suits them and to station troops everywhere in the world. But it is totally intolerable to them that other countries station troops
Well, we are realists. We recognize that American imperialism exists, we consider that we could reach agreement that would put an some of the United States' worries.
What is not negotiable are our national sovereignty and the existence of revolution. But it is precisely these things that are being challenged by the United States. Now, they are terribly worried because the Persian Gulf has been partially mined. But they themselves mined the port of Corinto, that is, "right under our nose"! That is the way they are! That is how unjustly they treat the rest of the world, and not just the poor countries. • What is the situation of the contras? To gauge the strength of an army, you have to look at its morale in combat and not only just its armaments. For example, shortly before the triumph of the revolution, the forces and equipment of Somoza's National Guard were intact. But a series of politico-military factors led to its defeat. On this level, the morale of our armed forces is excellent, and the same cannot be said for the contras.
The contras adopted a strategic perspective of inflicting a military defeat on the armed forces of the revolution and of taking power. They have given up this objective and adopted another — to create ideal conditions for American military intervention.
Before adopting this new strategic objective, they tried to take a stretch of Nicaraguan territory in order to set up a government, they tried unsuccessfully to occupy a city, to stabilize a contra zone in order to establish a strategic bastion. They did not achieve these objectives, evidently, since their zone of influence is in the north near Honduras. That is the real theater of the war, regardless of the fact that they have been able to penetrate as far as they have into the interior of the coun try.
It has been very important to us to understand the enemy's strategy in order to establish our own priorities. Since the contras did not manage to stabilize large compact military units, since they did not manage to get enough military personnel to form such big units and since we had more fire-power, they decided to disperse their forces. This was a temporary, tactical decision and not a strategic one.
I think that to a certain extent they succeeded in carrying off this tactical
NICARAGUA dispersal of their forces. That has led concretely to an increasing number of small armed actions in the recent period. Small armed actions reflect strategic weakness. So far this strategic weakness has not been definitive, and our immediate response has been to transform their tactical dispersal into a strategic dispersal. This means keeping from exercising centralized control over their dispersed forces.
Through our military offensive and new tactical deployments of our army, our intelligence and other forces of the Ministry of the Interior, we have succeeded in inflicting impressive human losses on the contras. For every one of our people who falls, three to four contras are made harmless. Our capacity for replacing our forces is much greater than that of the contras. Over the past two years, their military forces have decreased by more or less 50 per cent.
Nonetheless, it has to be said that they have achieved a certain capacity for renewing their forces. That is, they have recruited. They recruit essentially backward peasants, either through shanghaiing people or through standard propaganda and relying on large financial resources.
However, if you remember that before their last offensive, they had a large part of their forces trained in Honduras and in the United States (training that included preparation for anti-aircraft warfare with very sophisticated weapons, such as "red eyes," and for using considerable communications equipment and decoding devices to intercept our army's messages), you can understand that the major losses we inflicted on them have had a particular effect on these militarily best prepared troops. Naturally, the new forces that they have incorporated, which are made up to a greater extent of children of 12 and 13 years of age and women, are militarily much less effective.
their best trained forces have considerably very great decline which will be aggravated by the signing of the Guatemala peace plan. Their weakening is also reflected in the extent to which members of their forces have expressed their satisfaction at the peace plan and their wish to go home.
We, for our part, have demonstrated our seriousness in welcoming men and women who break from the contras. We welcome them in a humanitarian way, and we offer them jobs or other means of reintegrating themselves in to social and civilian life. • Do you think that the right opposition could win elections? There is always that possibility, and the constitution provides for respecting an election victory by forces other 15 than the Sandinista front. But I think September 28, 1987 • International Viewpoint
NICARAGUA that it is hard to imagine the Nicaraguan people turning their backs on history. Such a thing has never happened. To encourage everyone to be more realistic, I would say that it is virtually impossible that the people would decide to return to the road of the past. But, if that were to happen, we would have to yield power, and I would stop believing in humanity. • The right opposition says that in order to apply the peace accord it is necessary to lift the state of emergency, and to permit the reopening of La Prensa and Radio Catolica.' What do you think about that? I am reading the accord signed in Guatemala, site. This accord implies that the state of emergency will be lifted when the war ends. When somebody is pointing a pistol at us, it would be crazy to put down the one that we are holding. I think that negotiation could lead to suspending the state of emergency. For our part, we will move ahead very quickly in implementing plan. We are setting Reconciliation Commission.
However, until we reach an overall and simultaneous accord in Central America, nothing requires us to suspend the state of emergency. Before such an accord, we can decide to suspend the state of emergency only if we think that the conditions have been assembled for this. The state of emergency is not an end in itself. It is a temporary measure designed to meet the needs of a war situation.
Now, in the present conditions, we cannot lay down our military or our political weapons or the legal weapons authorized by the constitution. But we would be ready to stop shooting if there were no longer any enemies that we had to shoot at. And likewise we would be ready to stop using the state of emergency, the legal means provided 16 by the constitution, if that were no longer necessary. If we were not ready to do that, we would fall into an illegal and dictatorial state of affairs. • The representative of the Social Christian Party (PSC) says that you have 10,000 political prisoners in your jails. How much truth is there in that? There are 8,800 prisoners in total, the majority of whom are thieves, rapists, drug-peddlers and cattle-rustlers. The majority, therefore, are prisoners. In addition, there is group of former Somozista National Guards who have been imprisoned since the revolution. In all, 2,400 counter-revolutionaries are prisoners.
I am going to tell you an anecdote. When I went to Germany, an individual named Geisler questioned me, saying that there were Social Christian prisoners in Nicaragua. I checked by telephone, and I was told that there were, if I remember right, four or five Social Christian prisoners. But they were not jailed because of their political affiliation. One had committed a robbery, an-
Following Mr. Geisler's reasoning, you could say that there are 8,800 Catholics in jail in Nicaragua. You could also say that a majority of the prisoners are Sandinistas. But nearly 5.000 "Sandinista" prisoners are not in jail because they are Sandinistas but for other reasons.
What is more, I can tell you that a majority of the prisoners in Region VI (the northern part of the country, Jinotega, Matagalpa) are members of the armed forces or of the forces of the Ministry of the Interior who have committed abuses against the population, and have violated the law for one reason or another. They are also Sandinis-
Is anyone concerned about their • Where are you with the autonomy plan for the Atlantic Coast? The adoption of autonomy for the Atlantic Coast is entering its final phase. At the end of August or the beginning of September, autonomy projects will be submitted to the National Assembly. How long will this discussion go on? That depends on the National Assembly, but normally there should not be any major obstacle to adopting the plan because it has an important feature — it is an expression of the will of the majority of the inhabitants of the Atlantic Coast. This bill is the most democratic of all laws that I know of in history. It has been discussed and approved word by word, paragraph by paragraph, article by article by the people of the Atlantic
I might say that I would have preferred another sort of formulation in certain parts of the document, but since it is the result of collective discussion the people of the Atlantic Coast, it would be an insult to them to oppose this law.
The application of the law is not going to be very easy, because it is complex and represents a qualitative step. Every qualitative step involves difficulties. The autonomy scheme is the result of the restoration of peace to the Atlantic Coast and the correction of er-
This is a model law, an example to those facing similar problems throughout the Americas. It will be an encouragement to all the native peoples of the hemisphere, including those in the United States and Canada. It will be a cause for rejoicing for the Indians of the Americas and an object of great satisfaction for the inhabitants of the Atlantic Coast. • Since 1979, a revolutionary regime has existed in Nicaragua in which political pluralism and real trade-unionism has survived. What balance sheet do you draw from this situation? Pluralism and the mixed economy in Nicaragua are the natural results of our
This is not a trick or a tactic for gaining time. The problem is not whether this is positive or negative. It is a fact that cannot be gone around. It has not been easy to establish political pluralism, because in order to maintain this pluralism and mixed economy, the state has had to make major concessions to the em-
We have encountered difficulties because the political factor took precedence over economics. class interests of those sectors excluded from political power (those who retain political options without holding political power) have created blockages in production and in the economy in general. In other words, ideally, if we could separate the political aspect from the economic one and solve the problems in each of these areas separately, things would be much easier. The problem is that politics and economics are tightly intertwined.
The fundamental aspect has been politics. More than an instrument of producers, the [employers' organization] COSEP is a sort of political party. Moreover, concretely, it is part of the Acasa coordinating body, which is a political instrument opposed to the revolution. It is clear that the room for political pluralism will increase to the extent that the provisions of the Guatemala peace accord are applied, because it has to be said that the state of emer1. Radio Catolica, the archiepiscopal station, was banned on January 2, 1986; and La Prensa was suspended indefinitely the day after the US Congress voted $100 million in aid to the contras on June 27, 1986.
gency has restricted the activities of the opposition parties to a certain extent. • In this stage of the Sandinista revolution, what is the role of the Sandinista Defence Committees (CDS)? The mass organizations have developed considerably since the revolution. Before the victory, they were underground, while now they are part of the revolutionary power.
The CDS are a special form of representing the inhabitants of a neighborhood. They have been going through a process of finding ways to act and function. In the last analysis, the CDS can be the road to follow to consolidate mass participation in the revolutionary power. Now, the CDS are no longer essentially devoted to revolutionary vigilance, in any case not in the form that was practiced a few years
The CDS are the trustees and interpreters of the demands of the people in the neighborhood. Thus, these people have a channel for advancing their immediate demands - demands that are not outside the political context. Within the CDS, elections are genuinely democratic; they take place by means of secret ballots. I have witnessed a series of elections in various parts of the country. The CDS do not necessarily elect those who are recommended by the Sandinista Front, even though the majority in the CDS agree with the positions of the FSLN and recognize it as the revolutionary vanguard. • What remedies are there to bureaucracy, taking account of the fact that at the moment the main danger comes from imperialist aggression? I would like to know what chemical formula is effective in fighting bureaucracy. But I think that they will find a cure for AIDS first. I think that we really have to find mechanisms for fighting bureaucracy. But often this is very difficult because the forms that bureaucracy takes are so incredible that I am not surprised at the capacity it shows
I said to a friend a little while ago in on human rights bureaucracy: "If people commit the folly of launching a nuclear world war, humanity will disappear from the surface of the earth, but the bureaucratic cockroaches will survive."
That is a way of describing the difficulty of dealing with bureaucracy. Nonetheless, you have to deal with it. and I think that the main means for fighting it is for the leaders, the revolutionists, to maintain a direct contact with reality. And you cannot get to know the reality in an office except through direct contact on the ground with the masses, the working people, the people in the neighborhoods and
To make myself understood, I am going to give you an example. A document arrives in an office describing the problems in a factory where the workers are complaining about noise. Reading this paper is no substitute to visiting the factory. I went, and I realized that the problem was not that there was a lot of noise, but that the noise was intolerable, and that unless technical means were found to remedy this the workers were going to go deaf.
functionaries or minister responsible for this factory did not confront the facts, the problem would not be solved. Reports never describe the facts exactly. They give you only a
Today, imperialism and bureaucracy are our main enemies, and it is harder to fight bureaucracy than it is to fight imperialism. *
NICARAGUA
The
Central
America
peace
accord
THE HISTORY and context of the Central American peace accord, signed August 8 in Guatemala, are described in the following article from Panorama, a quarterly magazine published in Mexico City, which specializes in the affairs of the Central American and Caribbean region. ROBERTO BARDINI
O N NOVEMBER 7, peace could
be established in Central America if the weapons of dialogue get the upper hand over the dialogue of weapons. That is the day when the "Procedure for esta-
La firm and durable peace" approved by the five Central American presidents at their second meeting Esquipulas in Guatemala on August 7-8 is supposed to go into affect.
- signed by Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — provides that within 90 days a process of cease-fire, amnesty, suspension of foreign military aid and internal democratization is to take place within the region.
An international commission including representatives of the Contadora Group (Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela), the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations is to monitor compliance with the plan and its follow up
Thus, the four years of diplomatic efforts by the Contadora Group seem to have borne fruit. This negotiating body was formed on the island of Panama on 17 January 1983, and during its 56 September 28, 1987 • International Viewpoint
NICARAGUA months of existence it has given impetus to 30 meetings of Central American foreign ministers and deputy foreign ministers. In September 1985, it presented a "Treaty of Peace and Collaboration" for the region. Of the 100 points it contained, 97 were approved.
The three points left open dealt with the most controversial questions — arms reduction and inspection, the mechanisms for surveillance and following up on military maneuvers and political security.
During this time, the United the most notable absentee from the negotiating table and the main actor in from a distance through El Salvador, 1985, the Contadora Group's diplomatic talks seemed to have reached an impasse. And in January 1987, the social-democratic president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias, proposed an alternative peace project, known as the "Arias Plan.
However, this latest proposal did not succeed. Initially, it provided for a summit meeting in Central America for June 25-26. But on the request of the Christian democratic president of El Salvador, Jose Napoleon Duarte, this meeting was suspended.
On this question, Salvador Samoya, a representative of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) and of the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR) of El Salvador, told Panorama: "At the start, the Arias Plan was aimed against Nicaragua. It tried to open up a political space within the country for the contras at a time when the White House was going through the the arms sales to Iran scandal. But subsequently the game turned around, and the result was a symmetry that was not to the taste of the United States." Contradictions of US policy in Central America
Samoya continued: "What they wanted for Nicaragua — legalization of the contras within the country - they did not want for El Salvador with the FMLN-FDR. What they demanded from the Sandinista government — new elections — they did not want for the regime of Napoleon Duarte. And what they also wanted for Nicaragua, a ceasefire, did not suit them in El Salvador."
The symmetry between the contras and the FMLN obviously got in the way of Washington's plans. On July 19, on the occasion of the eighth anniversary of the Sandinista revolution, President Daniel Ortega said: "The government of the United States has rejected Arias' proposal, which no one could call leftist. That gives you an idea of Reagan's obsession — he does not want to move out of the White House International Viewpoint • September 28, 1987
### ELLIGENCE
AGENCY
TRAL
and leave a free Nicaragua behind him."
But if the Arias Plan did not suit Washington, the accord signed at Esquipulas II is still less to likely to. On August 16, Frank Carlucci, White House security advisor, announced that regardless of the Guatemala the United States would continue its aid and support for the contras until they can "exchange their guns for ballots. The American government, Carlucci said, "has the goal of achieving the establishment of a genuine democracy in
Two days later, the US ambassadors accredited to the five Central American countries concerned issued a communiqué expressing "the deep concern of the United States regarding the Guatere-translated from Spanish.] Before it could be applied, the US diplomats specified, Nicaragua would have to stop getting military aid from Cuba and the Soviet Union, put a stop to its "programs of subversion" in the region and set up a plan for "genuine and full democratization." In short, it was the same old
On August 19, a New York Times editorial indicated that "the new peace initiative in Central America obliges the Sandinista leaders and President Reagan to chose between the perspective of more fighting and the risks of peace: Mr. Reagan has every practical reason to choose the diplomatic road to peace." The paper even considered that the Guatemala accord could be "the last
All the governments concerned with the conflict in Central America saw it that way. On August 20, the five ministers of foreign affairs held a two-day after signing a seven-point accord that is to be the framework for implementing the initial stages of the regional peace treaty signed in Guatemala. The next meeting was to be held in Nicaragua on September 20.
On August 21, 13 Latin American ministers of foreign affairs (five from Central America, four from the Contadora Group and four from the Supporting Group) met in Caracas to draw up blueprints for monitoring the accords and inspecting compliance with them. These ministers had not met since June
But once again, diplomatic advances were obstructed by a new initiative by President Ronald Reagan, who, with the agreement of the Democratic Party, negotiable" points, which were outside the Esquipulas II accords and amounted to preconditions for applying these were to go into force on November 7. These points
• Any cease-fire in the region has to be acceptable to the contras, and Sandinistas will continue during the negotiations.
### "Soviet and Cuban presence"
• The "Soviet and Cuban presence" in Nicaragua will be considered as a "direct threat" to the national security of the United States.
• Democracy in Nicaragua is also linked to the security of the United States. Before 1990, there must be an electoral commission not controlled by the Sandinistas.
• The United States will gradually suspend "humanitarian aid" to the contras as they are integrated into Nicaraguan society.
Any suspension of US military maneuvers in Central America has to be understood as "demonstration of good faith" to aid the process of negotia-
As the White House sees it, any negotiations are the result of its own pressures. Sol Linowitz, former United States representative to the OAS, expressed clearly his view of the Latin American attitude toward Washington's policy. "There is a lot of scepticism about our intentions," he was to say. In fact, the history of Washington's interventions and its diplomatic prevarications speaks volumes, and these habits have not changed.
Some small comments are still more illustrative. In April 1985, when the US representative presented a "peace" plan for Nicaragua, the Nicaraguan minister of foreign affairs, Miguel d'Escoto was to say 24 hours later: "President Reagan has simply said, Either they die, or I'll kill them'." *