Word: tela
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...symbolism was as inescapable as the irony. When the five Central American Presidents gathered last week in the resort town of Tela in northern Honduras, their meeting place was a seaside compound once owned by the United Fruit Co., the U.S. multinational concern that long represented the essence of gringo imperialism in the region. There, the Presidents* negotiated the dissolution of the Nicaraguan contras, a force that to many Central Americans symbolized U.S. arrogance and interference during the 1980s. When the Presidents emerged from three days of deliberations, they had signed an agreement on a specific series of steps...
...called Tela Declaration was a gesture that carried all the moral authority of the region's leaders but none of the military force that might be needed to make it stick. Its realization hinges on the "voluntary" cooperation of the contras and assigns responsibility for implementation to the United Nations and the Organization of American States...
...enforced, the demobilization scheme will complete the gradual mutation of the contras from a military threat to a political force to a refugee remnant that U.S. officials have dubbed the "disposal problem." The Tela plan invites contras and their families to return to Nicaragua from their bases in Honduras but offers the option of resettlement in other countries. Honduras desperately wants the contras to go elsewhere, and Nicaragua has offered to repatriate them safely. But if the contras do not trust such Sandinista promises, the U.S. will face the painful question of its responsibilities toward the rebel force it created...
Despite the Tela plan's promise, few observers are ready to pronounce the contras dead. Such pronouncements have been issued before. And the rebels made it plain last week that unless the Sandinistas agreed to negotiate with them as equal partners, they had no intention of disarming. If the contras fail to lay down their rifles voluntarily, no one is offering to take the weapons by force...
...Central American Presidents have taken the destiny of Central America in our hands," Arias said in Tela, and the rebels obviously have no place in any future decision-making in the region...