High-level team to head for Nicaragua

[Rose Siding]

The Bush administration plans to send a high-level team to Nicaragua to protest Managua's failure to account for shoulder-fired missiles that could fall into the hands of Islamic terrorists, a senior U.S. official said yesterday.

The United States has become increasingly worried about the fate of hundreds of Soviet-provided SA-7s like the ones used by terrorists in Kenya in 2002 to try to down an Israeli airliner. In that attack, the two missiles missed their target.

The Nicaragua problem arose last month when a police sting, aided by U.S. officials, captured an SA-7 missile from four Nicaraguans who thought they were selling it to Colombian terrorists. To some U.S. officials, the missile's appearance at an air-conditioner repair shop in Managua was proof that elements of the military were hoarding scores of SA-7s for future sale on the black market.

Last week, the situation worsened when the Nicaraguan assembly overrode a veto by President Enrique Bolanos that stripped him of power to, at his discretion, dispose of weapons. The override effectively ends, for now, Mr. Bolanos' plans to destroy about 1,000 SA-7s known to be in the country's arsenal.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050221-114955-5823r...

[murray hill farm]

1. good lord!!!

What next???

[Monkie]

2. maybe they can ask bin laden to give back the 400 missiles U.S. gave them

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/tm_objectid=151390...

"missing Stingers originally given by the CIA to mujahedeen fighting Russia in the 80s Afghan war are feared to have found their way into the hands of fundamentalist fanatics."

"Hundreds of the missiles went missing during the mujahedeen war against Russia. In 1997, the CIA offered Taliban leader Mullah Omar $8million to buy back 53 of the weapons. He turned them down.
Ansar al-Islam, whose men fought alongside Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, could have up to 400 of the missiles."

[colonel odis]

3. have any countries refused admission to "high-level teams" and the such?

just wondering

[PATRICK]

4. A suspicious mind

might paint the picture of these efforts as gaming the origins of the next terrorist attack so that no fingers might be pointed in unwanted directions. Ooops, Russians are allowed to lose nukes. the Iran Contra Nicaraguans- oops- might have lost launchers.

Amazing what is being publicly revealed and what is not and how inevitable the hit seems to be minus any particular handle on the perps of convenience.

I hope someone is doing a chronology of the press releases and testimonies of these "counter-terrorist" efforts which on the ground I am sure are at least partly sincere efforts by true patriots. It is the gaming and the trajectory that I find interesting, the same as last time as being more a bit more ready to exploit disaster than to stop it.

Linkage of some terrorist hit to the war in Iran will be absolute by June.

[bemildred]

5. Oooooh. A "high-level" team. I'll bet this is part of a "broad plan".

[maddezmom]

6. kick

to combine threads

[corksean]

7. U.S. Asking Nicaragua to Destroy Missiles

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) - A U.S. government delegation worked Tuesday to convince Nicaragua to destroy about 1,000 surface-to-air missiles left over from the 1980s Contra war.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher confirmed that a U.S. team was in the Nicaraguan capital to renew efforts to have the portable SAM-7 missiles destroyed.

The team's leader, Rose Likins, the acting assistant secretary for political and military affairs, did not comment as she arrived in Nicaragua.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-481...

[RC]

8. I utterly fail to comprehend where the United states

can get off telling other countries how they should be run. Bone headed arrogance doesn't not even begin to cover this administration.

[CottonBear]

9. Nicaragua just keeps getting screwed by the US.

I suppose that most US citizens have no idea of how theUS government and the Marines intervened in the country in the 1920s. They do not know who Sandino was. Do the young Freepi remember the 1980's Cental American wars? Blowback anyone?

[NNN0LHI]

10. The US has a dark history in Nicaragua

http://www.gvom.ch/info_ang/a_nica/a3.html

<snip>But their enemies in Washington were not so forgiving. While the Sandinistas were rebuilding the war-ravaged economy -- it quickly reached the highest growth rate of Central America -- Washington was planning violence.

While the Sandinistas built health clinics and waged literacy campaigns that won international acclaim and awards from the United Nations, the Reagan administration built an army to overthrow the new government.

The "Contras" as they were called -- from the Spanish for counter-revolutionaries -- were recruited, armed, trained and paid by the CIA. They waged war not so much against the Nicaraguan army as against "soft targets": teachers, health-care workers, elected officials (a CIA-prepared manual actually advocated their assassinations). They blew up bridges and health clinics, and with help from a U.S. trade embargo beginning in 1985, destroyed the economy of Nicaragua.

The Sandinistas took the United States to the World Court for its terrorist actions -- the same court where the United States had won a judgment against Iran just a few years earlier, for the taking of American hostages. The court ruled in favor of Nicaragua, ordering reparations estimated at $17 billion. The United States refused to recognize the court's decision.

In 1984 there were elections in Nicaragua. More than 400 observers from 40 countries, including the Latin American Studies Association of scholars from the United States, found that the election was basically free and fair.

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