Ortega Requests Thatcher Help, Gets Lecture Instead

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher met with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega for the first time today and told him that his country’s economic problems were of its own making.

Thatcher’s office described the 75-minute meeting as “very frank.”

Ortega is on a 10-nation West European tour to drum up support for his battered economy and to help persuade the United States to normalize relations with Nicaragua.

He is seeking $250 million in Western aid from a Stockholm donors’ conference this week. He also wants support for a Central American regional peace plan and for Nicaraguan elections planned for next February.

Ortega said he had not expected economic help from Britain, which will not attend the Stockholm meeting.

“Dialogue has started,” he said. The fact he and Thatcher had exchanged views was “in itself positive,” he added.

“My intention in meeting Mrs. Thatcher was fundamentally political. I expressed to her the very important work she could carry out as a communicator with the United States,” he added.

Ortega has said he hopes relations will improve with President George Bush but has accused Secretary of State James Baker of telephoning European leaders to try to persuade them to boycott the Stockholm gathering.

A Thatcher spokesman said she told the Sandinista leader that Nicaragua’s economic problems were its own fault, criticized the country’s large standing army and regarded very seriously its “continuing support for guerrillas and destabilization elsewhere in Central America.”

The spokesman said Thatcher also expressed disappointment at an absence of progress toward democracy, which would mean removing East Bloc advisers from Nicaragua and cutting the size of the armed forces. According to U.S. officials, there are 8,000 Soviet bloc and Cuban personnel in Nicaragua, including 3,500 military and secret police.