The Hague, Netherlands — A former senior CIA analyst said in testimony before the world court that President Reagan planned to justify U.S. sanctions against Nicaragua by luring Managua’s forces into a clash across international borders.
David C. McMichael said Friday the scheme approved by Reagan called for the deployment of a special 1,500man covert force.
“The appreciation at that time was that the Nicaraguan government leadership was possessed . . . of a guerrilla mentality,” he said. “It was presumed that the Nicaraguan government would engage in hot pursuit across international boundaries in Central America.”
The incident was intended to dramatize Washington’s claim that Nicaragua was “a menace to the security of the Central American region” and to “help justify in U.S. public opinion, actions the US. Might take against Nicaragua,” said McMichael.
In Washington, a State Department spokesman noted the former CIA official said he had no knowledge the alleged plan was implemented.
Sequal, South Korea — A crewman on a Chinese military plane flown to South Korea last month by a defecting pilot returned home today with the ashes of a fellow crewman who had died when the plane crash-landed, officials said.
A spokesman for the Defense Ministry said Liv Shuyi, 37, the radioman aboard the Chinese plane, was sent home “in compliance with his own wish.”
The Chinese light bomber ran out of fuel and crash-landed Aug. 24 in a rice paddy near Iri, 110 miles south of Seoul, after it was flown from China by Xiao Tianrun, 33, who ultimately intended to defect to Taiwan.
China today thanked South Korea for sending home the crewman and the ashes of the navigator killed in the crash “on the request of the Chinese side” but said the crashed aircraft’s pilot should also be returned, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in Peking.
The pilot is still hospitalized in Seoul for injuries suffered in the crash. San Salvador, El Salvador The daughter of President Jose Napoleon Duarte was probably kidnapped by members of the “extreme left,” an official said in the first government statement blaming the abduction on leftists.
Col. Rinaldo Golcher, director of the Treasury Police also told reporters Friday two American advisers were working on the case.
Duarte’s oldest daughter, Ines Guadalupe Duarte Duran, and another woman were abducted Tuesday by unknown gunmen.
“By all the procedures carried out during the kidnapping, it could be deducted that it was a group of the extreme left,” Golcher said.
The president’s daughter was almost certainly still in the country and probably in the capital, although authorities did not rule out the possibility she had been taken to a rural area, Golcher said.
United Nations — Secretary-general Javier Perez de Cuellar urged the United States to reconsider a decision to impose travel restrictions on U.N. employees from the Soviet Union and five other nations.
The ban, issued by the State Department, will take effect Sunday and will confine U.N. employees from the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, Libya and Vietnam to within a 25mile radius of Columbus Cirlce in New York City.
Such measures have applied for years to diplomats from the Soviet Union and the five other countries on the list. Recent legislation by Congress has extended the ban to U.N. employees from those countries.“The proposed measures would seem to constitute discrimination among members of the (U.N.) secretariat solely on the basis of their nationality,” Perez de Cuellar said in a letter to U.S. Ambassador Vernon Walters.
Mexico City — A US. Embassy official has expressed “great concern” about the scheduled arrival of two Soviet warships in Mexico early next month, while Mexican officials said the ships are on a “courtesy”’ call.
USS. Intelligence sources reported that the two warships a guided missile destroyer and a frigate were headed to the port of Veracruz, 210 miles east of Mexico City on the Gulf of Mexico for a five-day visit.
Navy Ministry spokesman Hector Aguilar Chagoya said, “This is not the first time we have had foreign boats come on courtesy visits,” adding that he saw nothing “out of place” about the visit.
A U.S. Embassy spokesman said, however, that Washington would view such a visit with “great concern.” The visit to Mexico would be a first for Soviet warships.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 20, 1985