Nicaraguan govt puts muzzle on news

Press, 18 March 1982, Page 8

Nicaraguan govt puts muzzle on news

NZPA San Jose, Costa Rica Nicaragua yesterday suspended radio news broadcasts, imposed censorship on newspapers, and expressed fear of an imminent United States-backed invasion. The censorship was one of the state of emergency measures decided on after two bridges were blown up in Nicaragua three days ago near the honduran border. Some 3000 former soldiers of the overthrown Somoza dictatorship have been harassing Nicaragua's Leftist Sandinista regime from honduras for two years. The Nicaraguan foreign Minister (Mr Miguel d’Escoto) told the “Washington Post”: “We cannot discard the possibility of this (bridge bombings) being only the beginning of what could be an imminent invasion.” Several American news-, papers have reported “leaks” that President Reagan had authorised clandestine operations to destabilise Nicaragua.

But American officials asserted in Washington yesterday that Nicaragua’s state of emergency was a pretext to impose censorship so that soviet weapons from Cuba could be secretly rushed through Honduras to the Leftist guerrillas in El Salvador trying to block that country’s election. onMarch2B. Observers in the Nicara-

guan capital, Managua, believed Nicaragua’s 20,000 man Army, the strongest in Central America, could thwart any invasion. But it could not stop small incursions of Somozists without clamping down a state of emergency, observers theorised. The United States first put pressure on the Nicaraguan Government to stop their alleged arms supply to Salvadorean guerrillas by suspending aid a year ago.' In addition, partisans of the Somoza regime are reported to be in military training in the United States. The American Secretary of State (Mr Alexander Haig) disclosed yesterday that he has asked Mexico to transmit a peace offer to Nicaragua. Washington would restrain the somozist exiles in the United States and sign a nonaggression pact with Managua if it would stop supporting the Salvadorean guerrillas—support Nicaragua denies it is giving. Diplomatic sources in Havana said Cuban leaders were interested in starting a dialogue with Washington over the crisis, as suggested by Mexico. The Cubans believed the United States was now considering negotiations with Cuba and Nicaragua as a “necessary evil,” the sources said. Meanwhile in El Salvador.

guerrillas attacked the town of Cuscatancingo on the outskirts of the capital, San Salvador, yesterday for the second day running. They fired at a funeral procession, thus preventing the burial of two soldiers killed there the day before. In Washington, the United States Navy Secretary (Mr John Lehman) said the United States Navy could blockade any part of the Caribbean, but would need the support of the American people and Congress before engaging “in an act of war.”

When asked if a blockade of Cuba could stop the alleged arms flow to El Salvador, he said he did not know. American officials have denied having any plan for intervention in Nicaragua. General David Jones, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Brazil that there was no plan to intervene in El Salvador either, or to form an inter-American force. A 19-year-old guerrilla who said he was tortured into confessing that the Nicaraguan Government sent him to El Salvador received a hero’s welcome in Nicaragua when he arrived home. He embarrassed the American State Department earlier this week by retracting a confession he had been expected to repeat to Americanjournalists