Word: nicaraguan
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...Sandinista offensive appeared hell-bent on crippling the contras. With U.S. funding for the rebels cut off since the end of February and peace talks between the contras and the Sandinistas scheduled to resume on March 21, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega Saavedra saw his chance to wound his opponents badly before they got to the negotiating table. For weeks the U.S. had been monitoring a Sandinista buildup in the Bocay Valley in northern Nicaragua. But when the attacks began on March 10, they were even larger than expected. The Nicaraguan strategy was to destroy the contra bases along the Coco...
...Wednesday morning Nicaraguan troops were detected crossing the border into Honduras to attack rebel bases there. White House officials immediately responded by suggesting to Honduran President Jose Azcona Hoyo an American "show of support" that would stop short of a combat role. On Wednesday evening Ambassador to Honduras Everett Briggs relayed a letter from Azcona to the White House requesting assistance. The letter did not specifically mention troops, but Azcona later confirmed in a news conference that he had orally asked for this option. Reagan then gave the go-ahead to send four battalions -- two each from the 82nd Airborne...
Although the Reagan Administration insists that the troops will be kept far from the battle zone, the news that an American battalion moved within a dozen miles of the Nicaraguan border suggests that the Administration is once again putting its obsession with toppling the Sandinista government above the highly acclaimed regional peace plan...
...Sandinistas, on the other hand, are hoping to cripple severely the contra resistance--putting them in a greatly weakened position for their first high-level face-to-face negotiations within Nicaragua this week. Indeed, Costa Riean President and Nobel Laureate Oscar Arias Sanchez, who has repeatedly criticized the Nicaraguan government's failure to comply with the peace plan he designed, denounced last week's Honduran raid as a blow to the peace process and said it revealed that the Sandinistas are more concerned with eliminating the contras than negotiating with them...
...course, long before the events of this past week, the Arias Plan was in serious jeopardy. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega had made it clear in a speech that the Sandinistas would never open up the political process to include opposition parties...