Arms scarcity forces halt

Press, 25 June 1983, Page 11

Arms scarcity forces halt

NZPA-Reuter San Jose, Costa Rica Nicaraguan rebels led by Eden “Commandante Zero” Pastora yesterday, announced that they were temporarily halting their guerrilla war in southern Nicaragua after only seven weeks because of lack of arms. The withdrawal of the forces of the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance, whose military wing is under Mr Pastora’s command, leaves the tiny Nicaraguan Democratic Union as the sole rebel force in action in southern Nicaragua. Virtually all the remaining guerrillas fighting to overthrow the Sandinist Government are in northern Nicaragua with the support of the United States. This was a sore point with the alliance, whose communique complained of a virtual lack of backing from “democratic American nations,” an apparent reference to Washington. The alliance is led by defectors from the four-year-old Sandinist Government, including Mr Pastora, who resigned because of its growing military links with the Soviet bloc. A former revolutionary hero, Mr Pastora, seized the Nicaraguan National Palace for three days in 1978 in a prelude to the overthrow of the right-wing dictator, Anastasio Somoza, the next year. In El Salvador military sources said that Leftist guerrillas had dynamited a bridge north-east of the capital, San Salvador, after

a four-hour battle with Government troops yesterday and had isolated the town of Suchitoto, which is near two key hydroelectric dams. Military sources in Suchitoto, 44km north-east of San Salvador, said that a large insurgent force had overrun a military post guarding the bridge and blown it up. Suchitoto is considered strategically important because it is close to El Salvador’s two biggest hydroelectric dams. Guerrillas have been fighting for months to take control of the main highway that leads to Suchitoto and the dams. The sources said that the rebels now had virtual control over 18km of the road. The insurgents had launched a simultaneous attack on a civil defence post at Tecomatepeque, less than a kilometre north of the bridge, wiping out the garrison and seizing control of the town, said the military sources. Suchitoto had been virtually isolated for eight days because of the rebels’ control of the highway.