Word: nicaraguan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Democratic leaders who had fought the aid request could only sputter their annoyance with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega Saavedra. It was the second time he had undercut a potential victory in Washington: four days after the House had rejected contra funding eleven months ago, he embarked on a well- publicized and ill-timed pilgrimage to Moscow. House Speaker Tip O'Neill, who engineered the most recent defeat of the contra aid package, termed the invasion a "tremendous blunder" and disgustedly called Ortega "a bumbling, incompetent Marxist-Leninist, a Communist." Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont quipped sarcastically that...
...Jesse Helms, the staunch North Carolina conservative. "It baffles me that we can even be debating 90-day delays (in the delivery of contra aid) when men striving to be free are being killed." Frank Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, warned that the raid "underscores the dangers that the Nicaraguan conflict could spread throughout Central America...
...incursion spoke for itself. There had been talk of a bipartisan compromise that would temper the contra aid with a requirement that the Administration renew bilateral talks with the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. At midweek, however, Reagan signed a letter firmly stating, "Conditioning our aid to the Nicaraguan resistance on the initiation of direct bilateral talks, without first requiring that the Sandinistas talk to their own internal opposition, would seriously undercut our friends in the region and our foreign policy worldwide...
...most of the week, Nicaraguan officials denied that Sandinista troops had crossed the border. In Managua, Joaquin Cuadra Lacayo, the army Chief of Staff, told reporters, "In the last several weeks we have mobilized many thousands of men to the border. But it is absolutely false that Nicaraguan troops have violated Honduran territory." But the Sandinistas undercut their own denials later. At a press conference on Friday, Ortega sought to justify but not deny the raid. "Honduras lost control of its sovereignty by having the mercenary forces there," he said, referring to the contras. "The border area is converted into...
Uncharacteristically, the Nicaraguan government also admitted that the Popular Sandinista Army had losses. "The E.P.S. suffered 156 casualties, among them 40 dead, 116 wounded," read its communique. The contras put the Sandinista death toll at 200 and their...