Word: sandinistas
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Although the U.S. remains skeptical of Nicaragua's intentions, at least on the surface there are signs of movement in the long-frozen relations between the two countries. Shultz's new softer tone was prompted by a series of announcements and a few specific actions by the Sandinista regime that sound, and may ultimately prove to be, substantive. The Managua government said that it plans to hold democratic elections in 1985, and that the long electoral process will begin next month. It announced a limited amnesty for Nicaraguans who fled the country after taking part in fighting...
...counterrevolutionary activities and invited some 70,000 Indians who had been driven by the government from their long-held tribal lands to return. "We recognize that we've committed arbitrary acts against Nicaraguans of Miskito origin," said Minister of the Interior Tdmas Borge Martinez in a rare apology. Sandinista officials have for months privately confessed their gross mishandling of the Miskito issue. Borge also met with editors of the daily La Prensa and promised that its criticism of the Sandinista government would not be censored, as it has been in the past. The government even gave the economically shaky...
Officials in Washington had tended to dismiss most of these moves as propaganda ploys. They noted that the Sandinista decrees specifically rule out any participation by counterrevolutionary guerrilla leaders in the electoral process as well as by anyone who had invited "foreign intervention" in Nicaragua. That, of course, meant that the varied factions of armed contra insurgents, most of whom have been fighting the government with ill-concealed CIA support, would be left out in the cold. Washington also says it considers the promise of elections in 1985 all too vague...
...concern: the arrival of 40 clergywomen, the first planeload of 140 American and Canadian nuns and lay workers headed for a four-day prayerful protest against U.S. policy in Central America. The Honduran government barred the other 100 even before they left the U.S., calling them "subversives," but the Sandinista government in neighboring Nicaragua invited all 140 women to pursue their protest there...
Nicaragua has become a mecca for Americans who reject the Reagan Administration's policy of saber rattling and providing covert aid to the contras seeking to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government. Several hundred American residents of Nicaragua lend the government their expertise in such fields as agriculture, health, culture and industry. In addition, "solidarity" groups in the U.S. sponsor as many as ten different delegations every month for brief but busy tours of revolutionary life...