Managua Cites Support for Moving All Foreign Advisers Out of Region

A high-ranking Nicaraguan diplomat said Monday that the Sandinista government’s offer to send 100 Cuban military advisers home was a step designed to “prove the Nicaraguan readiness” to support withdrawal of all foreign military advisers from Central America.

Victor Hugo Tinoco, a deputy foreign minister, told reporters at a news conference here that “everybody is waiting” to see what action the United States will take after the meeting last Saturday in Montevideo, Uruguay, between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

But “we are not waiting,” he said. “We are taking the initiative.”

Tinoco, a tall, bespectacled diplomat who represented the Managua government in last year’s series of talks with the United States at Manzanillo, Mexico, indicated that Nicaragua might take further unilateral steps in an effort to ease tensions, but he gave no details. He urged the United States to return to the talks at Manzanillo, where he said Nicaragua has already agreed to discuss the issue of military advisers, military maneuvers and military installations.

Nicaragua has done this, he said, in order to bring about the normalization of relations with the United States. He said Washington has insisted on a discussion of these military issues because of U.S. dissatisfaction with the way they were dealt with in the draft of a proposed Central American peace treaty sponsored by the Contadora Group--Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Panama.

But after nine rounds of talks in Manzanillo, Tinoco said, the United States broke off the meetings in January.

“Our position is to continue (talks in) Manzanillo as a way of helping the Contadora process,” Tinoco said. “I would say that the United States government has been paying lip service to Contadora.”