Ortega Offers 1-Month Extension of Cease-Fire

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — President Daniel Ortega on Tuesday extended for one month a cease-fire with the U.S.-backed Contras and renewed a call for dialogue with the United States--even though Managua and Washington have expelled each other’s ambassador.

Ortega, speaking to several thousand farmers and workers in a rally marking the ninth anniversary of the Sandinistas’ rise to power, also urged the Contras to return to the negotiating table in Managua next week.

In his talk, Ortega declared that the Sandinista Front is Socialist and has been since it came to power, but said it is a socialism that allows political pluralism and a mixed economy.

“Our socialism is a socialism that gives all economic sectors the opportunity to produce and contribute,” Ortega said. “It protects all . . . who have a true desire to produce, to be efficient and to share their wealth with everyone else. This is the only thing we ask and demand.”

Dressed in a plaid Western-style shirt and cowboy hat--a departure from the olive-drab uniform he usually wears at official ceremonies--Ortega boasted that Sandinista rule is about to outlast the Reagan Administration and its efforts to topple the leftist regime.

‘Reagan Is Going’

“In January, 1989, when President Reagan is leaving office, the Sandinista revolution will continue firm,” Ortega said. “The Sandinista revolution remains, and President Reagan is going.”

In general, however, Ortega’s remarks sounded a conciliatory note.

He called on the United States to immediately renew talks with Managua to “normalize” relations. The last direct conversation between the two countries broke off in 1984.

The government last week expelled U.S. Ambassador Richard Melton and seven other diplomats, who were accused of organizing pro-U.S. opposition groups into anti-Sandinista demonstrations. The Reagan Administration responded in kind, ordering the ouster of Nicaraguan Ambassador Carlos Tunnermann and seven Nicaraguan envoys.

“We will be respectful of an American ambassador who is respectful of us,” Ortega told the crowd. “But one that violates our laws--one that tries to ridicule the government and the people--we will put him in his place. . . . He will not be allowed to be here in Nicaragua.”

Ortega said Melton had departed from the style of previous American ambassadors by more openly lending support to groups that have “assumed a counterrevolutionary position, rather than one of true civic opposition.”

Along with Melton’s expulsion, several opposition leaders were sentenced to six months in jail for participation in a march and clash with police. The opposition newspaper La Prensa was closed for 15 days and the Roman Catholic Church’s radio station suspended indefinitely.

Worried About Image

Opposition leaders and other analysts have said the Sandinistas cracked down because they feared widespread discontent would be channeled into more protest rallies, creating an image that the Sandinistas were losing control.

Tuesday’s rally marked the anniversary of a popular insurrection that ousted dictator Anastasio Somoza and carried the Sandinista National Liberation Front to power in 1979.

The event was held in a baseball stadium in the town of Juigalpa, 85 miles east of Managua in the heart of cattle country. The crowd, gathered under a hot sun and waving red and black Sandinista flags, was subdued. Its size was estimated at 7,000 to 10,000, less than half the number expected. Most attendees were bused in.

At the rally, Ortega was accompanied by most of the nine-member Sandinista directorate. After the president’s half-hour speech, he and 200 townspeople rode horses to a nearby ring for a bullfight.

Ortega unilaterally extended until Aug. 30 the cease-fire that the Contras and Sandinistas agreed on last April. It had been scheduled to expire July 30; both sides have reported violations.

Ortega also called on Contra negotiators to resume talks with the Sandinistas from July 26 to July 28. However, Contra leaders have previously turned down that date, saying they felt unsafe in Managua.

Eleven weeks of negotiations aimed at forging a permanent peace agreement broke down in June, with each side blaming the other.