Word: hondurans
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Washington officials blamed the Honduran jitters on Congress's April 24 refusal to approve $14 million in contra aid. Their argument is that Hondurans are questioning why they should risk their own security if the U.S. Congress is not willing to support the anti-Sandinista cause. A Honduran government official declared that his country is "paying for the difference of opinion between the President and Congress...
...Administration was particularly annoyed by Honduran moves to dislodge droves of contras from camps along the frontier with Nicaragua that the rebels have been occupying since mid-1981. The Hondurans are anxious to close the camps so that the Sandinistas, who this month made two incursions into the area, will have no excuse for further attack. It remained unclear last week where most of the estimated 15,000 rebels are now operating. The contras claimed that 12,000 of their troops have returned to Nicaragua. Sandinista officials insist that the rebels have retreated to areas farther inside Honduras, possibly...
...Ortega's transatlantic tour was useful to Nicaragua largely as a public relations exercise, the struggle on the country's northern border had more concrete significance. The contras, short of supplies after the denial of U.S. covert aid last October, have gradually withdrawn most of their forces to Honduran base camps to await help from a network of private sources (see box). Beginning early this month, Nicaraguan infantry backed by artillery began zeroing in on the main contra camp, known as Las Vegas. Finally an estimated 1,200 Nicaraguan troops launched an unprecedented cross-border assault reaching up to four...
...Nicaraguan government evidently feels that its military presence close to the Honduran frontier will be enough to contain the contras. But the Sandinistas do not seem to have a strategy for the domestic disenchantment that has begun to seep even into their own ranks. In Managua's Barrio Riguero slum, a stronghold of militance during the 1979 insurrection against former Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, a Sandinista activist named Maria says she remains faithful to the revolution's principles, but "life is getting harder." The main problem: "Basic necessities cost more and more, and some items are almost impossible to find...
Even as Nicaragua dangled the prospect of a change of course, Sandinista soldiers launched a one-day incursion into neighboring Honduras in pursuit of the contra guerrillas. After being repulsed by the contras, the Sandinistas returned to the attack at week's end. At least one Honduran soldier was killed and several others were wounded in the second incursion, leading the Honduran military to declare the border area a "zone of military emergency...