Word: managua
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Suddenly the pugnacious, increasingly hard-pressed Sandinista government of Nicaragua seemed to have seized the diplomatic initiative from Washington. To some it even appeared that the U.S. was on the defensive in its war of guns and acrimony with the Marxist-led regime in Managua. Catching Washington offbalance, the Sandinistas last week announced their willingness to accept, "in its totality and without modification," the draft of a regional nonaggression treaty sponsored by Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela. Collectively known as the Contadora group, those countries have been trying since July 1983 to bring peace and democracy to Central America...
...Nicaragua, Reagan has carefully muted his rhetorical support for the U.S.-backed contras in their effort to overthrow the Sandinista government, and in June he dispatched Shultz on a surprise trip to Managua in an effort to open negotiations with the Marxist-led regime. Even Mondale's advisers admit that the President has succeeded in lowering the profile of the Central American issue. "He's calmed it down," says Carter. "There are no Army maneuvers in Honduras...
Sweating profusely in the Nicaraguan heat on a March day in 1983, Pope John Paul II was forced to demand silence from a crowd of Sandinista hecklers present at an outdoor Mass in Managua. When Ernesto Cardenal Martinez, a Roman Catholic priest who also serves as Minister of Culture in Nicaragua's Marxist government, knelt to receive the Pope's blessing, John Paul wagged his finger in Cardenal's face and chided him, "You must straighten out your position with the church." These episodes, and his own keen observations during an eight-day-long visit to Central...
...policy is that all four demands are inseparable. A U.S. aide said, "We're not prepared to assign priorities to them." In reality, however, it has been an article of faith among many in Washington that the demand for democracy is paramount. As a senior U.S. official in Managua put it in June, "Internal democracy solves all the other problems...if there isn't any, Nicaragua's threat to its Central American neighbors will not abate...
That may still be either wishful or self-serving thinking. Whatever the Sandinistas may be saying in the discussions with Shlaudeman, they served notice last week that the issue of internal democracy may be beyond such negotiation. The Managua regime announced that it would uphold a ban on political privileges for a coalition of opposition parties, labor unions and business groups known as the coordinadora. The coalition, led by Arturo Cruz Sequeira, a onetime junta member, had refused to register for the Nov. 4 elections, charging that Sandinista restrictions on political freedom made a truly democratic race impossible. Said Democratic...