Latins in Accord on Regional Peace : U.S., With Its Own Area Plan, Faces Dilemma

WASHINGTON —  The United States may not accept the peace agreement reached by Central America’s presidents in Guatemala City because it fails to meet President Reagan’s requirements for remaking Nicaragua’s government, Administration officials said Friday.

But House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.), who negotiated a rival peace plan with Reagan earlier this week, hailed the Guatemala agreement. “I cannot conceive of the United States being in a position of upsetting this timetable or doing anything but rejoicing and cooperating,” Wright told reporters.

The White House offered no official reaction to the Guatemala pact, which was announced after Reagan left Washington for his weekend retreat at Camp David, Md. Spokesman Roman Popadiuk said that the Administration would not comment on the agreement “(until) we have received it and have had a chance to analyze it.”

Issue of Guarantees

But several officials said that they fear the plan does not contain enough guarantees that Nicaragua’s Sandinista government would allow U.S.-backed contras to participate in a democratic political system.

And they said that the diplomacy of the past week has put the White House in a corner: After agreeing on a peace plan with Wright and proclaiming its interest in a regional agreement, the Administration faces the unpalatable choice of embracing an accord it does not like or publicly spurning a pact backed by all of the regional governments.

Either course of action would make it difficult for Reagan to win renewed military aid for the contras from Congress after the rebels’ current $100-million funding runs out next month.

Administration officials met Friday afternoon to discuss the diplomatic situation, a White House aide said. “The upshot was: What do we do now?” he said. “There weren’t any good answers.”

“This puts the President on the spot,” a State Department official said. “Nobody is very enthusiastic about this agreement, but it’s not going to look good to walk away from it.”

The Guatemala agreement, negotiated by the presidents of Central America’s five countries in a two-day meeting, differs significantly from the peace proposal that Reagan and Wright offered on Wednesday.

-- The Reagan proposal calls for a cease-fire in Nicaragua’s guerrilla war and three political and military agreements to be reached by Sept. 30, only 53 days from now . The Guatemala pact has later deadlines, calling for a cease-fire within 90 days.

-- The Reagan proposal calls for a cutoff in both U.S. military aid to the contras and Soviet Bloc military aid to the Nicaraguan government but would allow humanitarian aid to the rebels to continue. The Guatemala pact calls for an end to all outside aid to rebel movements, but would not halt U.S. or Soviet supplies to governments in the area.

-- The Reagan proposal calls for setting a timetable for free elections in Nicaragua within 60 days of a cease-fire, which Administration officials say means a new vote before Nicaragua’s scheduled election in 1990; the Guatemala pact does not clearly require an early election, but calls more generally for “an authentic democratic, pluralistic and participatory democratic process.”

The Guatemala plan does make several bows in the direction of the Administration’s demands, most notably by requiring that Nicaragua restore civil liberties at the same time as the cease-fire is declared. But the White House official said that the Administration will insist on broad reforms in Nicaragua’s internal political regime.

“Our bottom line is that a cease-fire has to come with real democratization,” he said. “Halfway won’t do.”

Despite the Guatemala pact’s ban on aid to rebel movements, Administration officials said that Reagan would retain the option of asking Congress for more aid for the contras this fall. “But it won’t be easy if the Democrats can claim that we’re disrupting the peace process,” one official said.

On Friday morning, before the Guatemala agreement was announced, Secretary of State George P. Shultz told a congressional committee that the Administration plans to ask for more contra aid in October, even if it is only non-military aid under the provisions of the Reagan-Wright plan.

“We have to stand by the freedom fighters and, when the funds run out on Sept. 30, they’re going to need some funds,” Shultz said.

Wright said he hopes that the President will not ask for more military aid. “It would be counterproductive, in my opinion, to try to renew the fangs of war when we have a dove of peace,” he said.

Among some Administration officials, there was anger at Wright, who hammered out the compromise plan with Reagan on Wednesday morning--only to abandon it, in effect, by hailing the Guatemala pact on Friday.

“Some people smell a rat,” said one. “The whole thing looks suspiciously like a wired deal. . . . Nobody here thought through the (Reagan-Wright) plan and realized what could follow.”

Wright acknowledged that while he was negotiating with the White House on a proposal, he was also consulting with President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica, the chief author of the Guatemala accord. He said a Costa Rican official told him that “had it not been for the stimulus provided from our country, this (pact) would not have been possible.”

And he said the Administration, which rejected direct U.S.-Nicaraguan talks sought by the Sandinista government, thereby had “tacitly made a commitment to live up to whatever the Central Americans themselves would agree to.”