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- <text id=90TT0851>
- <title>
- Apr. 09, 1990: World Notes:Nicaragua
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Apr. 09, 1990 America's Changing Colors
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 59
- World Notes
- NICARAGUA
- One Army, Under Violeta
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> The question has hovered menacingly since Violeta Chamorro's
- upset win last February in Nicaragua's presidential elections:
- Would the defeated Sandinista National Liberation Front
- (F.S.L.N.) relinquish control of the army and police force that
- kept it in power for ten years?
- </p>
- <p> After a month of mixed signals, the answer finally appears
- to be yes to the much disputed issue. The F.S.L.N. and
- Chamorro's transition team agreed last week that the Sandinista
- People's Army and the Interior Ministry, which oversees the
- police, should be "subordinated to the civil power of the
- president of the republic." In a seven-point document, the two
- sides also specified that the new government could reduce the
- size of the military. Chamorro has promised deep cuts in the
- 70,000-man army, as well as in the police force, whose size is
- secret but is estimated at 10,000.
- </p>
- <p> One sticking point is the reluctance of some anti-Sandinista
- contras to lay down their weapons before Chamorro takes office
- on April 25. But the rebels are running out of friends faster
- than ammunition. When 100 contras ambushed and killed a dozen
- Sandinista soldiers near the Honduran border last week, the
- attack was swiftly denounced by the newspaper La Prensa, owned
- and operated by the Chamorro family.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-