Word: chamorros
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Conservatives and liberals in Washington are already arguing over who should claim credit for the Sandinistas' defeat. But nobody really "won" Nicaragua. If the election of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro as President last week reflected anything, it was the people's rejection of the pain they have endured for a decade. Give us a chance, they said. End the war. Save the economy. The immediate target of their wrath was the Sandinistas, but the U.S. too bears a share of responsibility. It now owes Nicaragua generous help if it wants democracy to flourish...
...greatest danger -- to Chamorro and to the U.S. -- comes from the Sandinista People's Army and the internal police. Hard-liners in the F.S.L.N. are balking at turning over control of the security forces to Chamorro, and many fear vengeance from the contras who still roam the countryside. The Sandinistas want the rebels to disband first. The contras in turn have expressed reluctance to put down their weapons until after Chamorro takes power on April...
...peacefully, the military standoff must be resolved before inauguration day. A violent confrontation would present Bush with an appalling decision on how far to go & to support the candidate the U.S. helped elect. Washington might serve its own interests better by persuading the contras to demobilize immediately, as both Chamorro and the Sandinistas have asked, but only after the Sandinistas offer firm guarantees that they will not pounce once the opposition is disarmed...
...fundamental challenge to Chamorro, and the most urgent claim on the U.S., remains Nicaragua's economy. "The country needs to be completely rehabilitated," says Sol Linowitz, former U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States and co-negotiator of the 1977 Panama Canal treaty. According to a 1986 World Bank study, the Nicaraguan economy will need $1.3 billion a year for the next ten years just to keep ahead of the country's growing population. The U.N.O. has called for at least $2 billion in U.S. aid -- $200 million immediately and $600 million annually for the next three years. Oklahoma...
...Bush Administration, caught off guard along with everyone else, has not yet unveiled a coherent plan to help Chamorro consolidate her victory. Bush has promised to let the five-year trade embargo lapse when Chamorro takes office, and he will no doubt agree to restoring Nicaragua's credit at the international lending institutions. He will resume full diplomatic relations. But his aides have been quick to dismiss the notion of a cash windfall. "It will not be anywhere near what some of the Nicaraguans are asking," said an Administration official. The U.S. is strapped for money for its own domestic...