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Last week the Sandinistas responded with a well-orchestrated "peace offensive." Speaking in Managua two days before the Montevideo meeting, Ortega declared that to "encourage the reduction of tensions" in Central America his government would send home 100 Cuban military advisers, with half of them leaving as early as May. Nicaragua would also observe an "indefinite moratorium" on the acquisition of new weapons systems and would take "practical steps" to revive the stalled regional peace talks, known as the Contadora process, among Central American countries.
Ortega called on the U.S. to return to bilateral talks at Manzanillo, Mexico, a dialogue broken off in January. He also indicated that the Administration should withdraw its request for contra funding. Finally, Ortega repeated an earlier invitation for a bipartisan delegation of U.S. Congressmen to inspect military installations in Nicaragua, in order to belie Administration arguments about the country's militarization.
Ortega's offer went part way toward answering some, but not all, of the Administration's concerns. Washington believes, for example, that there are 8,000 Cuban advisers in Nicaragua and that anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 of them are military. The Sandinistas have maintained that there are only 2,000 advisers, of whom fewer than 250 are military. At his meeting with Shultz, however, Ortega allowed that the number of Cuban military advisers in Nicaragua is 800.
Nicaragua's offer of a weapons moratorium included a reference to interceptor planes "needed for the completion of the country's current antiaircraft system." That presumably meant MiG-21s or other East-bloc jets. The U.S. has warned that it would consider the arrival of such aircraft a dangerous provocation. Ortega's proffered moratorium, however, did nothing to ease the Administration's abiding alarm about Nicaragua's current arsenal. That includes, by U.S. estimates, 150 tanks, 200 antiaircraft guns and 300 missile launchers, as well as at least six MI-24 Hind-D attack helicopters. With 100,000 regulars and reservists under arms, Nicaragua's military is larger than the forces of El Salvador and Honduras combined.
Ortega did not directly address two other key Administration demands: 1) that Nicaragua stop lending support to "insurgents and terrorists in the region," meaning the guerrillas in El Salvador; and 2) that the Sandinistas give their political opposition a say in government.
Even before Ortega made his public offer, he shared it with some influential Americans. He first revealed the proposal at a meeting with five U.S. Roman Catholic bishops who were making a five-day fact-finding tour of the region. At the same time, in Washington, Nicaraguan officials were knocking on congressional doors, criticizing Reagan's "uncle" comment and talking up the peace offer. Deputy Foreign Minister Victor Hugo Tinoco delivered copies of Ortega's statement to selected legislators.