Word: contra
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...Central American leader can expect a warm reception. Arias commands respect as a regional peacemaker; moreover many Congressmen share his conviction that the U.S.-backed contra war is a misconceived strategy for prodding Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista regime toward democratic reform. Most Democrats hope that Arias' visit will further undermine the Reagan Administration's dual policy of pursuing peace while trying to secure $270 million in new funding for the contras. Last week congressional leaders tentatively agreed to a stopgap provision of some $3.5 million in nonlethal aid to hold the rebels through a cease-fire scheduled...
Meanwhile the peace cavalcade proceeded in fits and starts. Contra leaders gathered in Guatemala City to examine their own future. In an unexpected gesture of goodwill, they released 80 Sandinista prisoners of war at an airfield in Costa Rica, 30 miles from the Nicaraguan border. Several days earlier, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega Saavedra pardoned 16 Central Americans, none of them Nicaraguans, who had been imprisoned for rebel activity...
...Sandinistas said last week they might declare a unilateral cease-fire in the contra war and continued to drop hints that the opposition daily La Prensa might be allowed to publish soon. Managua and Washington, however, exchanged sharp words after U.S. Education Secretary William Bennett encountered anti-U.S. protesters while on a visit to the Nicaraguan capital. In El Salvador a meeting between President Jose Napoleon Duarte and the country's leftist guerrillas failed to occur, aborted by Duarte's demand that the rebels first lay down their arms. Yet all hope was not lost. Leaders of the guerrilla...
That is not quite true. To some who support the Guatemala accord, Reagan's request for $270 million in contra aid before the Nov. 7 cease-fire seems not so much a way to pressure the Sandinistas as a ploy to sabotage Arias' proposal. Arias remains hopeful. "I am obliged to be an optimist," he says. "I really hope that the Americans will give us the opportunity until Nov. 7 to show that we have the will to find peace in Central America." Arias will need all his considerable optimism, charm and determination to persuade the White House that...
...drawn to explore the back channels of power. Her sources are mainly books, articles and public documents about the connections among anti- Castro Cuban refugees and anti-Communist activists in the U.S. Government. The ties -- clear, confusing and some crazy enough to be true -- are there, as the Iran-contra hearings disclosed. Veracity, rumor, deceit and braggadocio are hard to separate. "To spend time in Miami is to acquire a certain fluency in cognitive dissonance" is Didion's evaluation of her experience. Translated from the Latinate, this means she could not make sense out of the town. To compensate...