Nicaragua's Soviet-Era
Missiles Locked in Limbo
By Manuel Roig-Franzia,
Washington Post Foreign
Service
MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- At
a secret location
somewhere in Nicaragua,
shoulder-fired missiles
capable of taking down a
jetliner lie behind
heavy fencing and locked
double doors.
The missiles are
dangerous artifacts of
another era, a time
before the end of the
Cold War, when the
Soviet Union fed arms to
Marxist Sandinistas then
in power, and the United
States surreptitiously
countered by organizing
and arming an
anti-Sandinista force
known as the contras.
The bloody conflict
between the Sandinistas
and contras during the
1980s is long gone, but
the Soviet weapons
remain, locked in a kind
of limbo between
Nicaragua and the United
States, which fears the
missiles could fall into
the hands of terrorists.
Nicaraguan President
Daniel Ortega, a former
Sandinista rebel, has
proposed exchanging the
missiles for medical
supplies, an offer that
a U.S. State Department
official, speaking on
condition of anonymity,
called "unprecedented."
Paul A. Trivelli, the
U.S. ambassador to
Nicaragua, immediately
pronounced the offer
"very good."
But the deal hasn't
happened, and since
Trivelli's initial
remark, U.S. officials
have been reluctant to
speak publicly on the
matter. The reasons,
some Nicaraguan and
American observers say,
are that the proposal
has not been put on
paper and that
suspicions remain in
both countries that
Ortega -- who frequently
taunts the United States
-- might be luring the
Bush administration into
an embarrassing
diplomatic trap by
making a complex offer
that might never come to
fruition.
"Ortega's going to go
around six months to a
year from now and be
able to say, 'We made
this generous offer and
the U.S. ambassador came
out the next day and
said 'great idea,' and
what have we gotten for
it?' " said Eduardo
Gamarra, director of the
Latin American and
Caribbean Center at
Florida International
University. "Yes, he's
playing them."
Manuel Coronel Kautz,
Nicaragua's vice
minister of foreign
relations, said in an
interview that "Daniel
Ortega has never made a
proposal that wasn't
serious."
American officials have
been pressing Nicaragua
for several years to get
rid of its stockpile of
more than 1,000
shoulder-fired,
anti-aircraft missiles
-- one of the largest
caches in the Western
Hemisphere outside the
United States. Ortega is
offering to destroy 651
of his nation's
missiles, while keeping
400 that his military
advisers say are
necessary to maintain a
balance of power with
other Central American
nations. Still, the
destruction of more than
600 missiles would be a
major coup for U.S.
diplomats, and more than
22 times the number of
missiles the United
States helped destroy in
Bolivia in 2005.
The diplomatic push to
destroy Nicaraguan
missiles is part of a
worldwide effort that
has led to the
destruction of 17,000
shoulder-fired missiles
in the past five years,
according to State
Department figures. More
than 1 million of the
weapons have been
manufactured in
countries around the
world, including the
United States, and while
many of those have been
destroyed, no one knows
how many are still in
circulation.
The campaign to
eradicate missiles
gained momentum after a
2002 attack in which two
SA-7 missiles nearly
struck an Israeli
airliner in Mombasa,
Kenya, and again after a
2003 strike on a cargo
plane in Iraq that
caused damage but no
fatalities.
The following year the
United States, concerned
that the Nicaraguan
missiles were vulnerable
to theft, began paying
to build a facility to
store them. The missiles
that American officials
want to destroy are now
kept in state-of-the-art
bunkers that cost the
United States $130,000
for construction and
staff training,
according to a State
Department source. The
United States also has
funded weapons storage
facilities in Cambodia
and Bosnia, the source
said.
Ortega offered to
exchange missiles for
medical supplies on July
31, saying "this won't
be a gift, but simply a
barter with them."
Ambassador Trivelli, who
declined multiple
requests through a
spokeswoman to be
interviewed, told
Nicaragua's La Prensa
newspaper that he would
pass the offer along to
U.S. authorities "with
great pleasure."
The offer has puzzled
some in Nicaragua,
particularly because
Ortega has spent the
ensuing weeks bashing
the United States and
trading broadsides with
Trivelli in the
Nicaraguan press. On
Aug. 13, Ortega called
the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks
"insignificant" compared
with the U.S. nuclear
attacks on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki during World
War II. Trivelli said
Ortega's remark was
"disappointing."
Ortega lost the
Nicaraguan presidency in
1990 after 11 years in
office, then staged a
comeback in last year's
presidential election,
winning the top job in
the Western Hemisphere's
second-poorest nation.
Some U.S. officials
believe that Ortega's
antagonistic rhetoric is
an attempt to appeal to
his left-leaning base
and that his actions
behind the scenes are
much less hostile.
"This offer is an
encouraging sign," Avil
Ram?rez Valdivia, a
former Nicaraguan
defense minister who now
heads an American
chamber of commerce in
Managua, said in an
interview. "Ortega needs
a justification for
turning over the
missiles, and the
medicine deal could be
it."
A former Nicaraguan
official who has been
involved in past missile
negotiations said the
only way he could see
the deal working would
be if the Bush
administration slipped
additional money into an
aid program, such as the
U.S. government's
Millennium Challenge
Corp., without openly
admitting a quid pro
quo.
Political posturing
aside, the Nicaraguan
leader might have the
biggest incentive to
make the missile deal
happen, said Roger F.
Noriega, the former top
Western Hemisphere
official at the State
Department.
"If they get into the
wrong hands," Noriega
said, "he's going to be
the one held
accountable." |
