Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega is being besieged by the rest of Central America to continue a 19-month cease-fire with the Contra rebels, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Monday, and the U.S. position is one of "waiting and watching."
Ortega's threat at a weekend conference in Costa Rica to abolish the cease-fire - since modified - brought him ridicule from President Bush, joined later by sharp criticism from U.S. congressional leaders."The issue pretty much goes back to President Ortega and the Sandinistas in the sense that he's changed his position a little bit," Fitzwater said. "We obviously are urging that the cease-fire be maintained.
"At this point it's pretty much a point of waiting and watching to see what he (Ortega) does," the spokesman said.
He said Ortega's threat to end the unilateral cease-fire has alienated most of Nicaragua's neighbors and that Ortega was being pressured by them to preserve the status quo.
After first declaring his intention to end the cease-fire, the Nicaraguan leader said he would decide Tuesday whether to extend the truce or to resume hostilities between his leftist Sandinista government and U.S.-backed Contras.
Ortega had said he would abrogate the cease-fire because Contra forces had violated it, but Fitzwater accused the Sandinistas of violating the cease-fire far more often than the rebels.
"Violations by the Sandinistas dwarf the violations by the Contras," he said.
At the same time, Fitzwater defended Bush's depiction of Ortega as a "little man."
"The president was referring to small-minded pettiness," and not Ortega's height, he said.
Even though administration officials privately said it was unlikely that the administration would seek a renewal of lethal military aid for the Contras, Fitzwater refused to be drawn into a discussion of the prospects.
Bush on Saturday called Ortega a "little man" and an "unwanted animal at a garden party" after Ortega said he might no longer honor the cease-fire between his Sandinista government and the U.S.-backed Contras that has been in effect since March 1988.
Although he later said he would decide on Tuesday whether to break the cease-fire, Ortega's original declaration marred a two-day Western Hemisphere conference held in Costa Rica to honor that nation's 100 years as a democracy.
Any effort to renew U.S. military aid to the Contras would be sure to generate strong new opposition in Congress. The agreement reached last spring between the administration and Congress envisions a disbanding of the Contras after the Feb. 25 elections.
The agreement gives congressional committees that oversee Contra aid the authority to cancel a $49 million aid package when they review it a final time in late November.