Contra Forces in South Split From Rebel Movement

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — The Contras’ southern flank, which reportedly numbers about 3,000 guerrillas, split from the main U.S.-backed rebel leadership Wednesday, citing the elevation of military leader Enrique Bermudez to the political directorate.

The decision to break from the Nicaraguan Resistance, as the umbrella organization is known, was first announced Tuesday night in a communique released in San Jose, Costa Rica, by seven commanders who say that their southern forces make up about 40% of the rebel army.

The communique, which also cited a severe lack of supplies in the south, said that Col. Bermudez’s election on Monday at a top Contra meeting in the Dominican Republic was “far from producing a multi-party organization. . . . It is becoming one (that is) moving more and more to the extreme right.”

The commanders called his election “a disservice to the struggle” and complained that the Contra movement has “not responded . . . to the yearnings of exiled Nicaraguans and of the people in general.”

It was not clear whether the dissident rebels would continue to fight against the leftist Sandinista government as a separate force.

The commanders, who did not attend the Dominican Republic meeting, also complained of Bermudez’s ties to former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza.

“To elevate a former colonel of the hated Somozan National Guard to such a position does not bode well for the fight against the dictatorship in Managua,” they said in the communique.