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Nicaragua promises Rumsfeld to destroy missiles
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-11-13 08:57

Nicaragua assured U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Friday it would destroy more than 1,300 shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles that Washington fears could fall into the hands of terrorists.

Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolanos told a joint news conference after meeting Rumsfeld that the missiles, left from the former Marxist Sandinista government two decades ago, would be be destroyed within 18 months and Managua wanted no U.S. financial compensation for doing so.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gestures during a press conference at Presidential House in Managua, November 12, 2004. Rumsfeld began in El Salvador a week-long tour of Latin America, including Nicaragua, Panama and Ecuador, to thank the region for its support of the US-led effort in Iraq and the fight against international terrorism. [Reuters]

"We have a plan. We are moving ahead with the plan. It is of our own will. We seek no compensation for the plan," said Bolanos of the intent to destroy the missiles capable of downing civilian airliners.

"I think it's going to take about a year and a-half more," he said, adding that he and the presidents of other Central American countries had agreed to make military cuts "for a reasonable balance of defense forces that will include destroying the missiles."

El Salvador President Elias Antonio Gonzalez (L) and US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (R) conduct an early morning meeting at the presidential palace in San Salvador November 12, 2004. At center is a translator. [Reuters]

High on the agenda when Rumsfeld flew here on the second leg of a Latin American tour on Friday was the question over about 2,000 SAM-7 missiles provided by Cuba and the Soviet Union to the Sandinistas in the 1980s.

The Nicaraguan government destroyed 666 missiles earlier this year, but Washington wanted assurances the others would go as well.

"Nicaragua is a strong and resolute partner in the global war against terrorism," Rumsfeld told the news conference. And he said that impressions that he had come to put pressure on Nicaragua over the missiles "would be in error."

Rumsfeld will visit Panama on Saturday for talks with leaders there and then go to Quito, Ecuador, for a meeting of Western Hemisphere defense ministers next week.

EL SALVADOR TROOPS IN IRAQ

Rumsfeld flew to Nicaragua from El Salvador, whose defense minister assured him it planned to keep its elite troops in Iraq, where it is Washington's only Latin American ally.

El Salvador has 380 special forces soldiers serving in Iraq and, although the contingent is fairly small, it has real symbolic value for the Bush administration because the Iraq war is deeply unpopular across most of Latin America.

U.S. officials have repeatedly paid tribute to Salvadoran President Tony Saca's conservative government, and Rumsfeld visited the country to reinforce the close alliance.

Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic also sent troops to Iraq but later withdrew them. El Salvador, however, has held firm despite being threatened with retaliation by Islamic militant groups.

"You can be sure that Salvadoran soldiers will continue to serve just causes in whatever part of the world where humanity requires them," Defense Minister Gen. Otto Romero said on Friday.

Rumsfeld met with Saca and Romero and also went to a national commando school where he presented U.S. military Bronze Star medals for valor to six Salvadoran soldiers

On March 5, the troops saved the lives of six American members of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the body that preceded Iraq's interim government, when a convoy from Baghdad to Najaf came under attack from heavily armed insurgents.

The United States backed a series of right-wing governments with heavy military aid during El Salvador's civil war against Marxist guerrillas during the 1980s, when Central America was a Cold War battleground.

Washington also aided Contra rebels fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua during the same period. Nicaragua's civil war ended in 1990 and it has been run by conservative governments since then.

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