The Blitz

Keeping the U.S. off balance

A full-court diplomatic press was afoot last week, aimed at bringing an end, on paper at least, to strife in Central America--and intended by some of its participants to keep the Reagan Administration on the defensive. In New York City, the foreign ministers of the so-called Contadora group of countries (Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Panama) appeared before the United Nations General Assembly to declare their confidence that a peace treaty for the region will be ready to be signed as of Oct. 15. Their U.N. appearance followed that of Daniel Ortega Saavedra, coordinator of Nicaragua's revolutionary junta, who told the delegates that the U.S. planned to launch an invasion of his country on the same date, an accusation that a State Department spokesman dismissed as "preposterous." Meanwhile, it appeared that a final breakdown may have occurred in negotiations between Nicaragua's Sandinista government and a group of democratic opponents who want a postponement of that country's scheduled Nov. 4 elections.

The flurry of events left the Administration slightly off balance, as it has been since the Sandinistas announced two weeks ago that they were ready to sign a Contadora treaty immediately and without further negotiations. Discussions about the document, which calls for a non-aggression agreement and a commitment to democracy among the nations of Central America, have been going on since January 1983. The U.S. has grave reservations about the treaty as it stands. Among other flaws, say U.S. diplomats, the document would require the U.S. to halt military aid to El Salvador immediately, without stopping Soviet and Cuban assistance to Nicaragua. The Contadora nations, on the other hand, evidently feel that the U.S. is stalling. "We cannot clearly understand the opposition of the U.S. to the Contadora draft treaty," Mexican Foreign Minister Bernardo Sepulveda Amor told TIME editors last week. "I don't think we can go on forever negotiating documents."

Ortega's invasion announcement appeared to be part of a deliberate media blitz by the Sandinistas, who, according to a confidential internal document leaked to the U.S. embassy in Managua, intend "to introduce our electoral campaign into the U.S. electoral campaign." Whatever the Nicaraguan motives, TIME has learned that the anti-Sandinista rebels known as contrasindeed have plans to launch a series of attacks in Nicaragua within the next two weeks. According to contra spokesmen, the offensive would be the first in which the various rebel groups strike simultaneously, forcing the Sandinistas to spread their defenses more thinly than in the past.

Nicaraguan battle lines of a different kind seemed to have been drawn irrevocably at a meeting of the 58-nation Socialist International in Rio de Janeiro. Politicians at the meeting tried mightily to broker an agreement between the Sandinistas and their foremost democratic opponent, Arturo Cruz Porras, in order to allow Cruz and his backers to participate in the Nov. 4 elections, which have become an acid test of the Sandinistas' democratic intentions. Opposition forces have argued that they need more time to mount an effective campaign. Cruz and Sandinista Directorate Member Bayardo Arce Castano apparently agreed in Rio to postpone the balloting until Jan. 13. But the deal fell apart, according to some of those at the Rio gathering, when the Sandinistas refused to allow Cruz a three-day delay to consult with his allies in Nicaragua.

Even some socialists sympathetic to the Sandinistas feel that without Cruz the elections will be virtually meaningless.