Word: nicaragua
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...into Honduras, for the start of months of elaborate military exercises with that country's armed forces. The maneuvers, nominally for training purposes, have a more important strategic intent as well: Reagan wants to intimidate the leftist insurgents in El Salvador and, even more, the Sandinista government of Nicaragua that supports them...
Administration officials contend, probably with some justice, that the displays of power on several fronts have already made Nicaragua and even Cuba more conciliatory. They claim that underwriting a 10,000-man force of anti-Sandinista Nicaraguan guerrillas, contras, who fight from bases in Honduras, is designed to achieve the same end. The concern among observers is whether the White House policy managers are adept enough at this delicate diplomatic and military game to know when to call off the troops and strike a bargain. So far, however, U.S. allies seem comparatively unalarmed by Reagan's military responses...
...diplomats of Mexico, Panama, Colombia and Venezuela, the so-called Contadora group that is seeking a negotiated settlement in the region. He has also talked with the envoys of all the Central American nations involved in the conflict, including the new ambassador from the U.S.-opposed Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. But, amid all the activity, Kissinger still found time to settle the critical issue of where his car would be parked in the State Department garage. The agreement: right next to Secretary of State George Shultz...
That the Administration meant business had been demonstrated a few days earlier by an incident at sea 50 miles off the Pacific coast of Nicaragua. A U.S. guided-missile destroyer, the Lynde McCormick, drew to within a mile of the Aleksandr Ulyanov, a Soviet cargo ship bound for Nicaragua. Four days earlier, President Reagan had said at a press conference that the freighter was carrying helicopters to the Sandinistas. Over his ship's radio, the captain of the U.S. destroyer contacted the Soviet skipper and asked him what his cargo was and where he was headed. The Russian replied...
That ended the encounter, which the Pentagon later described as "routine." But the destroyer continued to follow the freighter to the limit of Nicaragua's territorial waters, twelve miles from the coast. Even as the Administration proceeded with plans for the military exercises, which will involve 19 naval vessels and as many as 5,000 U.S. servicemen at sea and in Honduras, it was displaying increasingly overt interest in finding a diplomatic solution to the Central American dilemma. Last week, after elaborate planning, U.S. Special Envoy Richard Stone met secretly with Ruben Zamora, 40, a leader of the Democratic...