Word: nicaragua
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...same time, however, Secretary of State George Shultz last week was taking a major public swipe at the Sandinistas. During his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Chicago, he charged that Nicaragua's November vote looks "more and more like sham elections on the Soviet model." As Shultz spoke, U.S. warships, including the battleship Iowa, cruised off the Nicaraguan coast. Their mission: to serve as reminders of the Reagan Administration's determination to stop the spread of Marxism-Leninism from Nicaragua to the rest of Central America. Meanwhile, leaders of the 10,000-member Nicaraguan Democratic...
...negotiating drama has been heating up since June, when Secretary of State Shultz paid a surprise visit to Managua, Nicaragua's capital, largely at the urging of Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado. In discussions with Junta Coordinator Daniel Ortega Saavedra, Shultz inaugurated what amounts to a fight-and-talk approach to U.S.-Nicaraguan diplomacy. After years of shunning direct negotiations with the Sandinistas, Shultz agreed to open formal channels of discussion on improving relations. But the Administration made no move to abandon its pressure tactics toward Nicaragua, notably covert support for the contras and the scheduling...
...Administration has been asking for four concessions from Nicaragua: 1) an end to the Sandinistas' military ties with Cuba and the Soviet Union, including the removal from the country of some 3,500 Communist military advisers; 2) an end to Nicaraguan support for the Marxist guerrillas in El Salvador; 3) curtailment of the country's formidable military arsenal and of any plans to use Nicaragua's Punta Huete airport, still under construction, as a base for advanced military aircraft; 4) fulfillment of Sandinista promises to support political pluralism, meaning reversal of the country's drift toward...
...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...
...return for those changes, the U.S. is prepared to offer infusions of assistance, especially to replace whatever funds Nicaragua would lose by cutting its ties with the East bloc. Says a U.S. diplomat: "As far as money, aid and investment go, they know we've got more to offer." U.S. officials also argue that the Sandinistas would win increased assistance from Western Europe, where aid to Nicaragua has dried up as once friendly governments have grown skeptical about the junta's intentions for installing pluralistic democracy...