Word: ortega
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...time for the official campaign for Nicaragua's national elections approached, the ruling Sandinistas faced a unique prospect for a Marxist regime: the chance of winning a new term in office through open and honest balloting. President Daniel Ortega Saavedra had been nominated for re-election in a splashy party convention, and he launched a surprisingly effective grass- roots campaign, while opposition candidate Violeta Barrios de Chamorro got off to a pathetic start. Best of all, the 10,000-man army of insurgent contras, deprived of U.S. military support, was skulking in Honduras under a regional peace accord ordering them...
...Ortega had been known to blow advantages in the past. Remember his spectacularly mistimed trip to Moscow only days after Congress voted to cut off aid to the contras in 1985? Last week he did it again. Ortega announced the cancellation of a 19-month-old cease-fire with the rebels and thereby raised the possibility that the elections, scheduled for February, might be scuttled. With that one action he managed to put Nicaragua back on the U.S. agenda, outrage his Central American neighbors and renew the prospect of war in his worn-out nation...
...Ortega lobbed his bombshell during ceremonies celebrating the centenary of democracy in Costa Rica two weeks ago. He accused the contras of murderous ambushes, and as a result, he was thinking of canceling the cease-fire. Ortega's announcement visibly angered President George Bush. The "little man in a military uniform," said Bush, had behaved like "an unwanted animal at a garden party...
...Ortega's final decision to call off the cease-fire was apparently dictated by the murder following his return to Managua of four civilians at an agricultural cooperative in San Miguelito, southeast of the capital, an attack the government pinned on the contras. At a sunrise press conference the next morning, an emphatic, often stinging Ortega insisted that his government "cannot continue being patient" in the face of contra "terrorism" and would "hit the contras hard." The Nicaraguan President blamed Washington's refusal to disband the contras for the resumption of fighting and hinted darkly that U.S. backing...
...terms of the accord signed last August to dismantle the rebel operation by Dec. 5. The U.S., to guarantee that the vote takes place, has supported the contras in their refusal to disband until after the Nicaraguan elections, though it has prohibited offensive operations. In this regard, Ortega's ploy may have worked. Sandinista and rebel leaders appear likely to hold new talks soon...