Word: nicaragua
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...five Central American Presidents. While the Reagan Administration countered Ortega's offer with a call for direct talks, contra leaders hailed the announcement as a "triumph for the resistance." After listening to Ortega's speech on radio in Costa Rica, they urged that Miguel Cardinal Obando y Bravo, Nicaragua's ranking churchman, be tapped to mediate the talks. The next day, Ortega visited the Cardinal's office and later emerged with Obando to announce that Obando had agreed to take the job. A date and place for the first meeting remain...
Despite the diplomatic obstacles ahead, Nicaragua's overture promises to put fresh wind in the listless sails of Central America's peace process. While no one seriously believed an enduring peace would settle over the region on Nov. 5, as called for by the pact, Arias had repeatedly warned that negotiations were at an "impasse" that could be broken only if the Sandinistas yielded on the cease-fire talks. Though the Reagan Administration has never been happy with the accord, the proposal has so far survived, if only because no leader wants to be seen as the man who killed...
...President Jose Azcona Hoyo had warned that they would no longer feel bound by the accord if cease-fires, amnesties, cut-offs of 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...
...peace framework may yet buckle under the weight of details. A central concern is whether Nicaragua's Marxist-oriented comandantes will honor their commitments to democratic reform and peaceful coexistence with their neighbors, or are merely making temporary moves to ensure the destruction of the contras. Since the signing of the accord, Nicaragua has taken several small steps, among them reopening the opposition daily La Prensa and Radio Catolica, inviting three exiled priests to return home and beginning talks with Nicaragua's opposition parties. But, warns an Arias aide, "we see all kinds of indications that Ortega would like...
Already the Nicaraguan government has rolled back some of its reforms. Two weeks ago a popular visitation program with Costa Rica was suspended after 1,200 Nicaraguans failed to come back. (Last week Honduras suspended a similar program with Nicaragua but offered no explanation.) The Sandinistas then canceled scheduled talks with Miskito Indian rebels from eastern Nicaragua and confiscated opposition posters. Last week Ortega called off the Sandinistas' unilateral cease-fires in four war zones, plainly hoping to appease hard- liners within his own government, who oppose even indirect talks with the rebels. "The contras did not respect that cease...