Ortega Offers to Remove 100 Cuba Advisers

L.A. Times Archives

Feb. 28, 1985 12 AM PT

From Times Wire Services

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — President Daniel Ortega offered Wednesday to have about 100 Cuban military advisers withdrawn from Nicaragua and to declare an “indefinite moratorium” on the acquisition of new weapons systems.

Ortega, speaking to diplomats, Sandinista officials and reporters including foreign journalists at the House of Government here in the Nicaraguan capital, said the arms in question include “interception aircraft.”

The offer, included in a six-page document read by Ortega, is part of new peace proposals that Nicaragua had said Tuesday that it was preparing to announce.

“As a first step toward fulfilling the objectives proposed by the Contadora Group and supported by Nicaragua, my government will forgo the cooperation of 100 Cuban military advisers. The first 50 of them will return to Cuba during the month of May, 1985,” Ortega said.

The Sandinista government has said there are 200 Cuban advisers in Nicaragua, but according to 1983 estimates from the CIA, there are 2,000 Cuban military advisers in the Central American nation. Ortega said the offer to withdraw 100 of these advisers is “motivated by the seriousness of the regional situation, which requires of the governments involved a responsible, mature and flexible attitude, (which) favors easing of tension. . . .”

A foreign diplomat, who asked not to be identified by name, said that Mexican Foreign Secretary Bernardo Sepulveda, who is visiting Cuba, is working out details of the withdrawal with Cuban President Fidel Castro. Mexico is a member of the peace-seeking Contadora Group, along with Colombia, Panama and Venezuela.

Ortega also indicated Wednesday that he seeks the resumption of talks with the United States begun in June, 1984, and broken off by the Reagan Administration in January in Manzanillo, Mexico.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Vicky Asher said, “We have seen the wire reports. We will wait until we see a complete text before making an official reaction.” The White House issued a similarly worded statement.

Ortega also said his government will resolve the status of a Nicaraguan defector, whose capture in the Costa Rican Embassy by Sandinista police led Costa Rica, Honduras and El Salvador to boycott a meeting of the Contadora Group two weeks ago, forcing a cancellation.

Ortega did not spell out what steps Nicaragua will take to satisfy Costa Rica about the incident in Managua on Dec. 24.

But U.S. Archbishop John J. O’Connor of New York said Wednesday after meeting with Ortega that the Sandinista government will soon announce the release of the defector.

Earlier Wednesday, the Reagan Administration dismissed as “a show-and-tell propaganda offensive” an invitation by Ortega to U.S. congressmen to inspect Sandinista military bases “without restrictions.”

Ortega said he is inviting a bipartisan group of congressmen to visit “without any restriction whatsoever” to see that the Sandinista military buildup is “strictly defensive.”

While encouraging congressmen to make “an open, no-holds-barred visit to Nicaragua,” White House spokesman Larry Speakes issued a statement declaring:

“In our view, an appropriate peace offensive by them (the Sandinistas) would be one that contains concrete actions to meet (U.S.) concerns, rather than a show-and-tell propaganda offensive designed to appeal to those who find it difficult to believe what they’re doing--which is the consolidation of a militarily strong, totalitarian Marxist-Leninist state in this hemisphere that does not represent the aspirations of the people of Nicaragua and is hostile to the interests of other countries in the hemisphere, including their neighbors and the United States.”

In answer to a question, Speakes said that his statement had been prepared by “the striped-pants diplomats at the State Department.”