Word: ortega
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...Nicaragua, Defense Minister Humberto Ortega Saavedra's renewed calls for bilateral talks with Honduras were ostensibly aimed at relieving border tensions. Washington believes such conversations would run counter to the Contadora process, the regional effort to bring peace to Central America. The minister's brother, President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, concluded his 25-day, 14-country tour of Eastern and Western Europe with the announcement that Moscow had agreed to supply up to 90% of Nicaragua's oil needs. Since estimates are that the Soviet Union already provides some 75% to 90% of Nicaragua's consumption...
Above all, the Nicaraguan government was intent on creating an image of firmness. On a blitz of Western Europe that was hastily added to a 13-day pilgrimage to East European capitals, President Daniel Ortega Saavedra repeatedly asserted that Nicaragua was not about to bend under the U.S. embargo. In Spain, France, Italy, Finland and Sweden, he pitched strongly to his hosts for help in filling the sizable trade vacuum ($168 million in 1984) left by U.S. sanctions...
Beginning his West European swing on a combative note, Ortega emerged from a meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez to describe President Reagan as "a fascist, like Hitler, who wants to turn Nicaragua into a giant concentration camp." Gonzalez was visibly uncomfortable. While cautioning that the U.S. trade embargo could force Nicaragua "to seek aid and support from the other side," meaning the Soviet Union, Gonzalez made no promises about increasing Spanish-Nicaraguan trade...
...Ortega received cordial but noncommittal welcomes at subsequent stops. In Paris he met with President Francois Mitterrand, after which Spokesman Michel Vauzelle said that France "can develop its commercial exchanges" with Nicaragua. But other officials suggested that France, which already runs a $7 million trade deficit with Nicaragua, was not anxious to increase it. In Rome, Italian Prime Minister Benedetto ("Bettino") Craxi agreed to maintain Italy's current $70 million combination of aid and trade with Managua...
...Ortega's transatlantic tour was useful to Nicaragua largely as a public relations exercise, the struggle on the country's northern border had more concrete significance. The contras, short of supplies after the denial of U.S. covert aid last October, have gradually withdrawn most of their forces to Honduran base camps to await help from a network of private sources (see box). Beginning early this month, Nicaraguan infantry backed by artillery began zeroing in on the main contra camp, known as Las Vegas. Finally an estimated 1,200 Nicaraguan troops launched an unprecedented cross-border assault reaching up to four...