Word: nicaragua
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...support peace efforts in Central America. But the 50,000 people who jammed Managua's Revolution Plaza on Thursday night got more than they had bargained for. An exhausted President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, just returned from Moscow, announced that his Sandinista government would make three concessions to demonstrate Nicaragua's "firm will to contribute to regional peace...
First came the easy news: 981 prisoners would be set free, none of them national guardsmen convicted of major crimes. Then the non-news: Nicaragua would declare a general amnesty and lift its state of emergency once the U.S. halted all aid to the contra rebels. Finally, the real news: the Sandinistas were willing to talk with the contras through an intermediary to negotiate a cease-fire...
Central America last week pursued peace with guns blazing and negotiators vacillating. In El Salvador, a brutal political slaying provoked the leftist guerrillas to cancel talks with the government. In Costa Rica, Nicaraguan Indian rebels charged that the Sandinistas had backed out of scheduled talks. And in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas reaffirmed their public line against negotiating an overall settlement with the U.S.-backed contra rebels, even as a regional peace plan is supposed to go into effect this week. Warned Comandante Bayardo Arce: "There will never, at any time or in any place, be any direct or indirect political dialogue...
...Nicaraguan government continued to debate an amnesty for political prisoners, but its contours remained vague. The Sandinistas have resisted a large-scale release of prisoners almost as vigorously as they have denounced contra talks. Last week they hinted that many of Nicaragua's estimated 4,500 political prisoners might be set free on or around Nov. 5. Ortega warned last month, however, that no one guilty of "atrocities" would be freed. At the time, he said the amnesty could apply to ex-guardsmen who were not guilty of "major crimes." Some 2,500 Sandinista supporters last week staged a rally...
...also complained that at least, by implication, the report accuses the administration of a "cover up" after initial disclosures that money from secret arms sales to Iran was slated for diversion to Nicaragua's Contra rebels...