News uigest&^—
Troops, warheads were ready in Cuba
MOSCOW - A Cuban official
says 270,000 Soviet and Cuban
troops were ready to go to war with
the United States during the Cuban
missile crisis and that 100,000
casualties were expected, a former
U.S. official said Sunday.
A Soviet general also has con
firmed for the first time that some
of his country’s nuclear warheads,
capable of striking the United
States, were on Cuba at the time of
the crisis in October 1962.
The revelations came during a
review of the Cuban missile crisis
at a conference over the weekend
at a trade union center in southwest
Moscow.
Soviets and Americans have
met before to discuss the Soviet
deployment of nuclear missiles in
Cuba and the U.S. response: a
blockade of the island and a de
mand for the rockets’ removal.
But this was the first joint meet
ing with Cuban officials who
guided their country through the
crisis. Premier Nikita S.
Khrushchev eventually withdrew
the missiles in exchange for Presi
dent Kennedy’s pledge not to in
vade Cuba.
At a news conference wrapping
up the conference Sunday, former
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara said the figures on
Cuba’s war readiness and casualty
estimate were provided by Jorge
Risquet, a member of Cuba’s rul
ing Politburo.
“They say they had armed
270,000 men. They were deter
mined to fight to the death of every
man, and they believed there
would be 100,000 Cuban and So
viet casualties,” McNamara told
reporters.
Other American officials said
privately the Cubans had said the
casualty count could have reached
800,000. Cuba’s population at the
time was 8 million.
McNamara said that of the
troops, 40,000 were Soviet, four
times higher than U.S. intelligence
estimates at the time.
Risquet cited the figures to
show his country seriously be
lieved that a U.S. invasion of his
island was imminent. McNamara
said no such invasion was ever
contemplated, but speaking of the
Cubans, he added: ‘‘If I had been
in their shoes, I would have be
lieved the same thing.”
American officials have said
they were never sure whether any
Soviet nuclear warheads had actu
ally reached Cuba but that they
assumed they had.
Col. Gen. Dmitri A. Volkog
onov, director of the Defense
Ministry’s Institute of Military
History, said that at the time of the
crisis 20 Soviet nuclear warheads
were on Cuba. Another 20 war
heads were headed to the island
aboard a Soviet ship that was
caught in the U.S. naval blockade,
he said.
Volkogonov said he got the
figures from military archives.
He made the remarks in a closed
session of the conference Satur
day, and they were reported to The
Associated Press on Sunday by
Raymond Garthoff, a State De
partment official at the time of the
crisis.
Viktor G. Komplektov, a dep
uty Soviet foreign minister, said
the presence of the warheads on
Cuba did not mean they would be
put imminently on launchers in
preparation for a nuclear strike.
r‘At no time, not before, not
during the beginning of the crisis,
or in the most acute moments of
the crisis, neither from the Soviet
command there in Cuba nor in
Moscow was there, or could there
have been an order to mount nu
clear warheads on the missiles,”
Komplektov told reporters. He
said "notone” of the missiles was
ready and targeted at the United
States.
Capitalists courted to help sinking Nicaraguan economy
MANAGUA, Nicaragua — The leftist
Sandinista government is desperately seeking
the support of capitalists and workers to brake
Nicaragua's rapid slide into economic chaos.
With the war against U.S. backed rebels
virtually stalled, President Daniel Ortega faces
a potentially deadlier enemy: an economy so
feeble even Sandinista supporters are becom
ing restless.
‘ ‘There’s a general awareness that the prob
lem belongs to the whole country,” and the
government cannot rescue the economy
single-handedly, said Bayardo Arce, a mem
ber of the ruling Sandinista National Director
ate.
‘ *'We must establish a harmony of interests,
outlining the responsibilities of the govern
ment, private enterprise and workers, so we
can face the country’s problems, ” he said in an
interview.
Ortega on Monday is to announce his gov
ernment’s economic plan for 1989, which is
expected to include a series of austerity meas
ures.
The measures reportedly include a three
month wage and price freeze to curb inflation,
which independent economists predict will
reach as high as 300 percent a month from now
through May. Ortega has acknowledged that
inflation reached 20,000 percent last year.
In a Dec. 31 speech, Ortega announced
budget cuts of 29 percent for the Defense
Ministry and 40 percent for security forces.
The government has not said how many jobs
will be eliminated as a result.
Opposition leader Enrique Bolanos, a cot
ton grower and former president of the Supe
rior Council of Private Enterprise, was skepti
cal of the Sandinistas’ show of good will to
ward the business community.
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“When they have problems, they seek us.
But when the storm is over, they return to their
insults,” said Bolanos, whose property was
confiscated by the government in 1985.
Meanwhile, the economy continues to
worsen. This month, the official exchange rate
has gone from 920 cordobas to the dollar to
2,300 cordobas a dollar. The minimum wage is
3,748 cordobas a day, about $1.63.
The Sandinistas blame Nicaragua’s eco
nomic crisis on the war with the rightist rebels
known as Contras, which began in 1981. The
two sides signed a tentative cease-fire in March
1988, after the U.S. Congress stopped military
aid to the Conuras, but talks on a permanent
truce broke down in September.
Opposition leaders cite poor government
management and planning for the state of the
economy.
Israels Sharon says while Arafat lives
there will be no peace in the Middle East
JERUSALEM -- Industry Minister Ariel
Sharon said Saturday there will be no peace in
the Middle East as long as Yasser Arafat “runs
around alive” and that Israel must do more to
counteract the PLO leader’s peace initiative.
Sharon’s comments in-an interview with
Israel radio reflected “a personal opinion that
Arafat should be killed,” his spokesman,
Moshe Behagon, told The Associated Press.
“He says many times that if it were possible,
he would want to kill him.”
Also Saturday, Defense Minister Yitzhak
Rabin said U.S. officials support his peace
plan that includes elections in the occupied
territories in exchange for a cease-fire in the
Palestinian uprising, Israel television reported.
One Palestinian protester was reported fa
tally shot in the territories Saturday. Arab
news reports said at least 10 people, including
a boy, either were shot and wounded or beaten
in clashes between soldiers and stone-throwers
in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The army confirmed four woundings by
plastic bullets.
The death raised to 370 the number of
Palestinians killed in the nearly 14-month-old
uprising. Fifteen Israelis also have died.
Sharon’s remarks come amid growing de
bate over the nation’s policy toward the Pales
tine Liberation Organization and Israel’s re
sponse to the 13-month Palestinian uprising in
the occupied territories.
“As long as Arafat runs around alive
around us, there will never be peace,’’ Sharon
said. “No Arab leader will be ready to meet
with us for fear for his life. And no Palestinian
will be ready to talk because if he does so
while Arafat is alive, his fate is sealed.’’
Sharon seemed to be alluding to repeated
threats from leaders of the PLO supported
uprising against Palestinians who cooperate
with the Israelis. More than a dozen alleged
collaborators have been killed during the up
rising.
Ohrtce the nation's defense minister, Sharon
was forced from the post in 1983 after Israel’s
militia allies in Lebanon massacred Palestini
ans in Beirut.
Israel denounces the PLO as terrorists and
refuses to talk with it. The nation protested
bitterly when the United States opened talks
with the PLO last month. But there are grow
ing calls for Israel to change its policy.
Haitian survivors ot accident
say treated like ‘ animals ’
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic
- A hundred Haitian cane cutters were
crammed “like animals” into a truck driven by
a drunken man who drove the vehicle off a
cliff, survivors said Saturday. The crash killed
48 people.
The Ccntial Workers Union and the Major
ity Workers Center denounced the brutal treat
ment of Haitian cane cutlers and accused the
government of “practicing slavery.”
Officials said it was the worst traffic acci
dent ever in the Dominican Republic, which
shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with
Haiti.
The truck plunged from a cliff early Friday
about 22 miles north of Santo Domingo. Those
killed included six children and three women.
In an interview published Saturday by the
Santo Domingo newspaper Ultima Hora, one
of the Haitian survivors, Manuel Yang, said the
Haitians were recruited near the border by a
Dominican “trafficker” and smuggled to a
military barracks in the Dominican border
town of Dajabon.
“After being kept prisoners for two days,
two tall men and two soldiers took us out,” he
told the newspaper. “We were fed and loaded
on a truck ... like animals.”
Ultimo Hora quoted Yang as saying the
truck driver told the Haitians if they gave him
money to buy rum they “would not be taken to
cut cane but rather would be taken someplace
else where there was better work.*'__
Nebraskan
Editor Curt Waoner
472-1788
Managing Editor Jane Hlrt
Assoc News Editors Lee Rood
Bob Nelson
Editorial Page Editor Amy Edwarde
Wire Editor Otana Johnson
Copy Desk Editor Chuck Orson
Sports Editor Jeff A pel
Arts A Entertainment
Editor Mlckl Haller
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_ 1988 DAILY NEBRASKAN_
