Word: contra
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...avert a total aid drought, contra leaders are trying to keep open the nonmilitary pipeline. "We are prepared to agree to a cease-fire," says a senior contra official. "But not to an unconditional cease-fire." The Guatemala peace accord, however, does not compel the Sandinistas to negotiate directly with the rebels. At a meeting last week in Tegucigalpa, the contras' six civilian leaders accepted an offer of mediation from Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez, who pioneered the Guatemala plan. They have asked Arias to persuade the Sandinistas to accept a cease-fire that would enable the rebels...
That ambivalence owes much to Honduran jitters that an end to hostilities in Nicaragua might send a tidal wave of contra refugees crashing across the border. Costa Rican officials believe that in the event of peace, the peasant soldiers in their country would return to Nicaragua, with only the former National Guardsmen of Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle and upper-class Nicaraguans choosing to remain abroad. Honduran officials are less sanguine. As it is, they must cope with some 150,000 Nicaraguan refugees. They fear that most of the roughly 12,000 contras would want to set up shop in Honduras...
...lame duck. That perception comes on top of long-standing nervousness about the U.S. commitment to its allies, a fear fueled by the American example set in recent decades in Cuba, Viet Nam and Lebanon. "The U.S. has no long-term policies anywhere," says a contra official. "If the problem can't be solved quickly and easily, Americans lose interest and move on to something else...
...weeks ago, Ortega hotly debated with him in public for an hour. Moreover, a letter that Dole had written demanding the release of two jailed opposition leaders was published in the Sandinista press. Last week the two activists were turned over to Senator Harkin, a Democratic foe of contra aid, one week before their month-long jail terms were to expire...
...inquiry promises to be a grand piece of political theater, with enough ( ideological conflicts, impassioned players and historic resonance to make it a worthy sequel to this summer's Iran-contra civics lesson. But the hearings into the nomination of Robert Bork as the nation's 104th Supreme Court Justice offer something more. At issue on the 200th birthday of the Constitution will be the most fundamental questions at the heart of that document and in the soul of the nation it constituted: What inalienable rights -- ranging from free speech to equal justice to personal privacy -- are guaranteed to citizens...