President Bush left open the possibility Tuesday he would seek renewed military aid for the Contra rebels if Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega calls off the cease-fire his leftist government declared 19 months ago.
Asked about that possibility at a news conference, Bush said: "I would re-evaluate this situation in a minute if the cease-fire is broken."Congress suspended military aid to the Contras in February 1988, and the administration has chosen not to seek additional assistance of that kind.
Bush spoke a day after Secretary of State James A. Baker III said threats by Ortega to suspend the truce with the Contras may be a prelude to cancellation of national elections set for February in Nicaragua.
"I worry that they (the Sandinista government) may be trying to lay a predicate to walk away from their commitment to hold elections," Baker said in an interview Monday with The Associated Press.
However, Ortega insisted Monday the elections will be held.
"The elections are taking place in Nicaragua, period," Ortega said, speaking through an interpreter in an interview with NBC News. "With Contra or without Contra they are going to take place, definitely. With war or no war, that is, elections are taking place."
Ortega surprised a hemispheric conference on democracy in Costa Rica last Friday by announcing that he would cancel a cease-fire that the Sandinistas and the Contras agreed to in March 1988. However, he later modified that by saying he would decide the matter Tuesday.
At his news conference, Bush renewed his criticism of Ortega.
"I've never seen a meeting where all the participants were so unanimously against all the outrages of one. And we're still getting messages in here about the outrageous performance of Daniel Ortega," he said. "He reached new embarrassing proportions of stepping on it."
The president also seemed to reject a proposal by Ortega that civil rights leader Jesse Jackson try to persuade U.S. officials and members of Congress to convert Contra humanitarian aid to a program under which the rebels would be demobilized.
Bush said the idea had "limited appeal."