Word: contra
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First came the easy news: 981 prisoners would be set free, none of them national guardsmen convicted of major crimes. Then the non-news: Nicaragua would declare a general amnesty and lift its state of emergency once the U.S. halted all aid to the contra rebels. Finally, the real news: the Sandinistas were willing to talk with the contras through an intermediary to negotiate a cease-fire...
...offer was a stunning reversal for the Sandinistas, who for years have dismissed the contras as "U.S. puppets" and rejected talks of any kind with rebel leaders. Ortega tried to downplay the shift by emphasizing that his proposal does not extend to political negotiations. Cease-fire talks, he said, will "unmask those who say they want peace but in reality want war." The concessions coincided with the first deadline of the peace plan championed by President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica and signed last August by five Central American Presidents. While the Reagan Administration countered Ortega's offer with...
...foreign aid to rebels, and other goals were not achieved on schedule. Yet both men remained committed to the proposal, even as rebel violence continued in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. The White House had planned to use the failed deadline to push for $270 million in new contra aid. But with a congressional defeat looming, the Administration decided to seek only $30 million in nonlethal aid, to tide the contras over at least through mid-January...
...Contras inside Nicaragua admit they have been using the cease-fire zones for resupply operations. Ironically, as even some of the rebels' strongest supporters reluctantly conclude the contra effort is doomed -- an opinion seemingly shared by many of the civilian contra leaders -- the estimated 12,000 rebel soldiers are finally beginning to look like a fighting force. Armed with U.S. Redeye missiles, the contras claim to have shot down more than 20 Sandinista helicopters this year, and are now stepping up attacks in the northern provinces. A sympathetic expatriate community in Miami still believes the contras could...
...Sandinistas, by calling upon the Reagan Administration to disband the contras, are behaving just like the Somozas and the clutch of tyrants and oppressors before them who always looked to Washington for a solution to their problems. "We'll talk to the circus owner and not the clowns," Ortega has said when asked why he will not deal directly with the contras. Though he modified that stance last week, those words still reflect a profound inability to recognize what the Sandinista-contra dispute is all about: a domestic disagreement over the future of the land...