| The US has decided to suspend military aid to Nicaragua until it destroys all Soviet-made SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles, which Washington worries could fall into the hands of terrorists, a government source said yesterday. Concerned by the whereabouts of missiles dating from the clash between leftist Sandinistas and contra rebels in the 1980s, the US last month sent a mission to Nicaragua to review President Enrique Bolanos' progress on his pledge to find and eliminate them. But Nicaragua had said it would destroy some but not all of the missiles. "Some US military air programmes have been frozen," Defence Minister Jose Adan Guerra told local media. The US embassy business attache, Peter Brennan, noted that Washington wants all the Nicaraguan missiles destroyed. The SAM-7s were purchased by the Nicaraguan Sandinista government between 1979-1990 to battle the US-backed contras. |