Word: nicaragua
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...ponders Nicaragua's conciliatory gestures...
...They are vastly different from the I statements they were making some six months ago," said Secretary of State George Shultz. He was talking about the conciliatory tone of recent pronouncements by the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua. But perhaps more important, the same thing could be said about Shultz's own comments last week. When asked at a press conference about the new Sandinista approach, the Secretary said, "I welcome that. Of course, what we want is for a reality to be put behind the rhetoric. So naturally we want to probe and find out what is there...
Although the U.S. remains skeptical of Nicaragua's intentions, at least on the surface there are signs of movement in the long-frozen relations between the two countries. Shultz's new softer tone was prompted by a series of announcements and a few specific actions by the Sandinista regime that sound, and may ultimately prove to be, substantive. The Managua government said that it plans to hold democratic elections in 1985, and that the long electoral process will begin next month. It announced a limited amnesty for Nicaraguans who fled the country after taking part in fighting...
...past. The government even gave the economically shaky newspaper funds to buy scarce and expensive newsprint, the shortage of which brought La Prensa to the brink of shutdown last week. The Sandinistas have also sent home some 2,100 Cuban technicians, teachers and other workers whose presence in Nicaragua was a primary cause of concern to the Reagan Administration. An undisclosed number of Cuban military advisers remain...
Officials in Washington had tended to dismiss most of these moves as propaganda ploys. They noted that the Sandinista decrees specifically rule out any participation by counterrevolutionary guerrilla leaders in the electoral process as well as by anyone who had invited "foreign intervention" in Nicaragua. That, of course, meant that the varied factions of armed contra insurgents, most of whom have been fighting the government with ill-concealed CIA support, would be left out in the cold. Washington also says it considers the promise of elections in 1985 all too vague...