Word: sandinistas
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There is good reason why morale is high: at the moment, the Sandinista army seems to have the upper hand in its four-year-old war against the U.S.-backed opposition forces known as the contras. "When we are attacked, we have to respond with fire," declares Defense Minister Humberto Ortega Saavedra (see box). The main insurgent group, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN), declared earlier this year that it had infiltrated 14,000 of its guerrillas into Nicaragua from Honduras and positioned an additional 3,000 along the border. Last week the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry charged that the border forces...
...contras, however, appear to have been caught off guard by the relative speed and efficiency with which Nicaragua's Sandinista People's Army (EPS) responded to the insurgents' rainy-season offensive. On Aug. 7, about 1,500 rebels swarmed into La Trinidad, a town in the department of Esteli, about 60 miles from the Honduran border. Comandante (Colonel) Javier Carrion, 31, the commander of the northern military zone, rushed one counterinsurgency battalion, or BLI, plus local troops to the town and called in air support from three Soviet-built Mi-24 Hind helicopters, the gunships equipped with machine guns...
...ornate chamber of the International Court of Justice in the Hague last week, lawyers for Nicaragua charged the U.S. with attempting to overthrow the Sandinista government, using the contra rebels as one of its tools. The lawyers made their case in the World Court before an empty row of leather chairs reserved for the American side. The U.S. is boycotting the proceeding: last year the Reagan Administration announced that while it would continue to recognize the court's jurisdiction generally, it would not do so for two years in matters involving events in Central America...
Despite Washington's absence, there were in fact some Americans in the courtroom. Harvard Law Professor Abram Chayes, 63, formerly the chief State Department legal adviser, was serving on the Sandinista courtroom team, which had been assembled by another American, Paul Reichler, 38. Once a student of Chayes', Reichler has handled many legal problems for the Sandinistas...
Nicaragua's Sandinista government...