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In a statement released on Friday, June 20, members of the so-called ?cooperation round table,? which is coordinated by the ambassador of the European Union Francesca Mosca, expressed their concern about ?the processes of inclusion and active citizen participation? in Nicaragua. The statement continued: ?We are concerned about the electoral law and the judicial order which leaves so much room for interpretation that it raises questions about its application in the present resolution.? The cooperation round table includes the ambassadors to Nicaragua from Germany, Denmark, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, Canada, Switzerland, Spain, the European Union, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. Nicaragua received about US$500 million each year in loans and donations for poverty reduction and the strengthening of institutions.

The next day, President Daniel Ortega reacted to the statement during a speech at the inauguration of a 28 megawatt electricity generating plant in the department of Masaya which had been sent by Venezuela. He said that the ambassadors ?believe that they have the right to criticize because they are giving us a few crumbs which they call aid but which is only a tiny payment on the enormous debt that they have? with the developing countries. He added that his country will not be like Judas and sell itself out for 30 pieces of silver.

Ortega added that the new immigration policies of the European Union were ?shameful.? He said that Europeans ?arrived full of ambition, with expansionist desires, to occupy our lands, destroy our culture and kill our people. Who asked them for a visa to come and invade our continent??

Also on Saturday, U.S. Ambassador Paul Trivelli said that he joined the concern expressed by the members of the cooperation round table. He added that some presidents in Latin America ?thunder everyday against the United States or against Europe, capitalism or democracy, but they do not want even the best intentioned criticism of their own countries. I believe that is not just.?

On June 17, the newspaper El Nuevo Diario published an open letter to Daniel Ortega written by international notables of the left Noam Chomsky, Susan Meiselas, Ariel Dorfman, Salman Rushdie, Eduardo Galeano, Hermann Schulz, Juan Geiman, Brian Willson, Tom Hayden, Bianca Jagger, and
Mario Benedetti asking him not to close the doors on dialogue and expressing their personal sympathy for Dora Maria Tellez. The letter said, ?What led Dora María to ? put her life and health on the line is a clear demand : that political spaces not be closed and that a national dialogue take place to resolve the food crisis and the high cost of living which, like many countries, Nicaragua faces.? Analysts in media close to the government lamented that the signers of the letter have been manipulated by those who do not want Nicaragua to take advantage of excellent relations with the countries of the ALBA, with Venezuela, and with Cuba. (Radio La Primerisima, June 20; La Nueva Radio Ya, June 19)

4. Government proposes a ?Special Regime? in indigenous region

The government has proposed a change in the Autonomy Law for the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua by which a third autonomous region would be created with the same forms of government and similar administrative divisions. According to the government the objective of the creation of the Special Development Regime Zone would be to make possible special attention on the part of the executive branch to the needs of the indigenous territories Miskitu Indian Tasbaika Kum, Mayangna Sauni Bu and FIPLA Sait Tasbaika, located in the watersheds of the Alto Wangki and Bocay Rivers in the Department of Jinotega. The proposed region would not include the departmental capital of any other department or region. The region has a population of about 30,000.

According to Primitivo Centeno, an indigenous leader from Bocay, ?Politically manipulated information based on party interests has been used by right wing media outlets with the goal of discrediting the Special Development Zone? saying that the Atlantic Coast Autonomous regions were going to lose part of their territory. He said that, in the special area, programs to improve agriculture, infrastructure, the environment, education, and health services would be put in place to benefit a zone that historically has lived in extreme poverty.

Some Constitutional Liberal Party leaders reacted against the decree saying that President Daniel Ortega was taking these areas away from the Department of Jinotega in order to control them by means of the Councils of Citizen Power, local citizen participation groups set up to interact with the national government. PLC deputy Victor Duarte has proposed that Siuna, Bonanza, Rosita and Mulukuku, now part of the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN) be separated from that region and form a department named Jose Santos Zelaya. It was speculated that this new department would elect local authorities loyal to the PLC. (La Nueva Radio Ya, June 19; El Nuevo Diario, June 10)

5. Uribe and Ortega trade accusations

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega traded angry accusations last week, with Uribe accusing Ortega of harboring terrorists and Ortega accusing Uribe of ?state terrorism.? The latter accusation prompted the Colombian government to send an official diplomatic protest on June 20. The diplomatic strain is continued fall-out from Nicaragua?s decision to grant political asylum to three young women, two Colombian and one Mexican, who were present when the Columbian military launched a cross-border attack on a FARC guerilla camp in Ecuador.

The Nicaraguan government sent a plane to pick up the three women in Ecuador after an Ecuadoran judge ordered them arrested. Ortega accused Uribe of wanting to ?kill? the three women sheltered in his country. Colombian Foreign Minister Fernando Araújo Perdomo announced that Colombia is exploring filing an extradition request for the three women despite the fact that there is no extradition treaty between the two countries.

Colombia is particularly incensed that Nicaragua overflew Colombian airspace citing ?official business? to transport the three women. Uribe said Ortega ?deceived? Colombian authorities. (Radio La Primerisima, June 22; AFP, June 22)

6. 1984 US invasion plans uncovered

La Prensa reported that documents uncovered in the archives of the former East Germany intelligence agency, Stasi, revealed Pentagon plans, elaborated in 1984, for an invasion of Nicaragua by 50,000 US troops. The plan was to provoke the Nicaraguan army to enter Honduran territory and then for Honduras to ask the US to come to its aid. The operation was planned to include troops from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Vieques, Puerto Rico, as well as the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy and numerous other naval ships.

FSLN founder and former National Directorate member, Tomas Borge, told La Prensa that the invasion was cancelled due to the capture of CIA contractor Eugene Hasenfus, whose plane was shot down over Nicaraguan territory in October 1986. His capture exposed what became the Iran-Contra scandal which shook the Reagan administration when the Congressional investigation exposed that it was selling arms to Iran, then at war with Iraq, and using the profits to circumvent the Congressional ban on aid to the contras.

The papers in the Stasi archive reveal details of several US ?war games? done in preparation for an invasion, such as ?Solid Shield? between April and May 1987 and ?Lempira,? ?Blazing Trails,? and ?Guardians of the Kings? in 1985-1987. The reports detail numbers of troops involved as well as their home bases and air fields.

A 1987 Stasi document posits that the Esquipulas II peace talks were used by the US to pressure the FSLN and El Salvador?s FMLN. The Sandinistas, the report said, ?feared that if it did not show results in 90 days that there would be a direct US military intervention.?

On September 12, 1984, the Stasi received a report, ?On the Preparation of an Invasion by the USA in Nicaragua? which cited ?reliable circles of the Congress? and stated that government departments received a White House request to work quickly on plans for Nicaragua with the view toward an invasion. The invasion was planned for the first months of Reagan?s second term in 1985.

Yuri Andropov, in his last years as director of the Soviet Union?s KGB, promised to then Interior Minister Tomas Borge the conditional support of the superpower, but ?not to the point of a nuclear war.? The pledge was made during a Borge tour of socialist states in the early 1980s and was found in a file of a later conversation with Minister of State Security of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Erich Mielke. The US was suspicious, but, Borge said, ?It was unthinkable for us that the Soviets would put military bases in Nicaragua; we said it to the United States; we said to them [the Soviets].? Borge said they even had to give up plans to obtain Mig fighter planes because Moscow advised against the purchase of them, because the United States would immediately bomb them.

Borge said that in case of an American invasion, the greatest Sandinista resistance would have been mainly in the center of the country. Borge remembers that they were clear that they would suffer a conventional military defeat against the United States. Only ?prolonged resistance? could increase the losses and dissuade the invaders, he said. ?I was assigned to resist in Managua, which is the reason why I organized different safe houses ... but an invasion would have been disastrous for Nicaragua,? he stated via telephone from Lima where he serves as Nicaragua?s ambassador to Peru. (La Prensa, 6/17)