Word: 21s
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...attempted coup began when rebel officers seized the Defense Ministry. Major General Haile Giorgis Habte Mariam, the Defense Minister, refused to join the revolt and was killed. There were reports of MiG-21s and helicopter ( gunships screeching over the capital and of tanks and armored personnel carriers converging on the ministry. Meanwhile, in Asmara, the northern provincial capital and Ethiopia's second largest city, Mengistu's Second Army, some 150,000 strong, was in mutiny. In sympathy with the rebellion, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front announced a two-week cease-fire in its 27- year-old war of secession...
...agreed to help Honduras upgrade its existing squadron of a dozen French Super Mystere fighter jets, half of which are in disrepair. Even without the Kfir jets, Honduras enjoys air superiority over neighboring Nicaragua, and the U.S. decision is likely to make the Sandinistas more eager to obtain MiG-21s from the Soviet Union...
...Government leaked word, based on sketchy and unconfirmed spy-satellite information, that crated Soviet MiG-21 interceptors were about to be unloaded at Nicaragua's Pacific port of Corinto from the Soviet freighter Bakuriani. The U.S. has long warned Nicaragua that the arrival of MiG-21s or similar fighters would be "unacceptable," since such weapons would upset the regional balance of air power...
...time the Bakuriani unloaded its crated cargo and returned to sea, Washington was persuaded that MiG-21s had not been delivered. One reason, indicated by Shultz, was a Soviet assurance to the contrary. Another was the information gleaned from the rash of U.S. spy-plane flights, more probably low-flying F-4 reconnaissance jets than the superfast, supersophisticated SR-71s claimed by the Sandinistas (no sonic boom from an SR-71 can be heard when the aircraft flies, as it can on spy missions, at an altitude of 15 miles or more...
Nonetheless, the Pentagon kept up its threatening expressions of concern. Even without the MiG-21s, U.S. officials said, the arrival of the Bakuriani marked the first time the Soviets had sent weapons to Nicaragua under their own flag, rather than through such surrogates as Cuba or Bulgaria. U.S. military officials said last week that four more Soviet and East-bloc freighters were on their way to Nicaragua, without saying when the ships would arrive, or where. Said Pentagon Spokesman Burch: "Nicaragua has now armed itself to a greater degree or in quantities far greater than any of its neighbors...