‘U.S. trade embargo doomed to fail’

Press, 15 May 1985, Page 10

‘U.S. trade embargo doomed to fail’

NZPA-Reuter Paris The United States trade embargo against Nicaragua is doomed to fail because it lacks international support, Nicaragua’s President, Dr Daniel Saavedra Ortega said after talks with French leaders.

“The embargo is damaging the Nicaraguan economy in the short term; it is damaging the health and life of the Nicaraguan people,” he said yesterday in Paris.

Nicaragua used to buy vital medicines from the United States and would now have to buy them elsewhere. Other imports seriously hit were farm machinery and transport vehicles, he said. "But from the moment the United States embargo lacked international support it was condemned to fail,”

said Dr Ortega. He said he was very encouraged by an 80-minute meeting on Monday with the French President, Francois Mitterrand, who opposed the embargo.

“We found in President Mitterrand a disposition to strive towards peace in Central America, and a willingness to step up efforts to promote economic co-opera-tion with Nicaragua at a moment when this increased United States aggression is being declared in the economic field,” he said.

Dr Ortega has just ended an eastern European tour during which he was promised economic and financial support. He replied to Western commentators who have suggested that his visits to Spain, France, Italy, Sweden, and Finland, added

after the embargo was announced, were aimed at dispelling the idea that it might push Nicaragua closer to the Soviet bloc. • “What this aggressive economic action by the United States against Nicaragua is doing is to push Nicaragua closer to Latin America, western Europe, the socialist countries, the non-aligned countries, the Arab world, , the whole world,” he said. He described Nicaragua’s relationship with the Soviet Union as one of friendship and mutual respect and said this was the kind of relationship it wanted with the United States. “But instead we are receiving bullets, we are the victims of terrorism, an economic embargo, and the mining of our ports,” he said.