Nicaragua Revolts

President Oscar Arias Sanchez said Thursday that the Sandinista rulers in Nicaragua are "bad guys" who have "unmasked themselves" as anti-democratic and deserve to be punished for breaking the Central American peace agreement. In his harshest criticism of the Sandinistas, the author of the peace accord said he was prepared to urge non-military pressures on them to resume peace talks with U.S.-backed Contras and end political repression. He did not spell out any proposed sanctions.

President Reagan, reminding Democrats of their vice presidential nominee's past support for Contra funding, said Saturday that the Sandinistas' renewed crackdown on political dissent has created an opportunity for "a real bipartisan consensus" in support of new aid for the armed Nicaraguan opposition. In a bid to win Democrats' backing for a new Contra funding bill, Reagan, in his weekly radio address, complained that the Democrat-controlled House "removed the principal prod . . .

President Oscar Arias Sanchez says he is willing to change some parts of his Central American peace plan that are opposed by the Reagan Administration. The 10-point Arias proposal calls for cease-fires in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala and a cutoff of all outside aid to insurgent forces in those countries as soon as their governments start talks with unarmed opponents.

House Speaker Jim Wright said Sunday that it is "high time" for the United States to press the Soviet Union to cut off military aid to the Sandinistas. "I think it's something we should demand, and I think it's something that must be forthcoming," said the Texas Democrat, who suggested that President Reagan and Administration officials discuss the issue in upcoming meetings with Soviet leaders.

On a terrace overlooking Managua, sipping an after-dinner rum--better than brandy on a balmy tropical night--old friends reminisce, and their recollections lead to poetry. A top officer of the Central Bank and confirmed believer in free-market economics begins. Eyes moist, she recites the warning from Ruben Dario, her country's most famous poet, to Teddy Roosevelt after the fourth U.S. invasion of Nicaragua: "Be careful. Spanish America lives!

Brooklyn Rivera, a leader of Nicaragua's Indian rebels, is scheduled to head a 10-member delegation to Managua today for peace talks with the Sandinista government. Rivera said the delegates expect to negotiate with members of the nine-member Sandinista National Directorate during their weeklong stay. They also plan, he said, to visit the isolated Atlantic coast region, where the Indians have been fighting since 1981.

Congress' Iran- contra hearings, which once appeared likely to doom the Reagan Administration's efforts to win more aid for the Nicaraguan rebels, have instead reopened the long debate over U.S. policy toward Nicaragua and revived the contras' hopes. Administration officials, pointing to polls that show a sudden upsurge of public support for the contras, said they believe that President Reagan actually could win a major increase in aid for the rebels in the fiscal year that begins Oct.

A remote Honduran island in the Caribbean has reportedly become the main depot for a CIA-run military operation supplying rebels fighting to oust the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Rebel sources and military observers, who asked that they not be further identified, said Americans are overseeing rebel supply operations on one of the Swan Islands, once a support base for the abortive CIA-backed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.

U.S.-backed contra forces on Friday claimed that they shot down a Soviet-made MI-24 helicopter in combat with Sandinista government troops in Nicaragua. It was the fifth such claim from the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the main contra army, since combat began heating up after Congress approved $100 million in U.S. military and non-lethal aid to the rebels last fall.