U.N. Sending Panel to Investigate Sandinista-Contra Clash at Border
Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar on Monday named a four-member fact-finding mission to visit the Nicaraguan-Honduran border zone where Sandinista troops were reported to have clashed with Contras inside Honduras last week. The mission will leave New York today and return next weekend.
Leading the group will be Gilberto Schlittler Silva, a Brazilian who is director-designate of Security Council affairs in the U.N. Secretariat. Other members are Alexander Martinovic, a Peruvian who is a political affairs officer on Perez de Cuellar’s staff, and two Uruguayan army majors assigned to the U.N. Military Observer Group in Kashmir--Jose Viggiano and Eduardo Gorgitano.
On Friday, Nicaragua requested a Security Council meeting at which it charged that the U.S. dispatch of troops to Honduras constituted a threat to peace in Central America and asked for international verification of the facts.
U.N. spokesman Francois Giuliani emphasized that the mission was not authorized by the Security Council but was appointed by the secretary general “in consultation” with the 15-nation body.
Giuliani said the team will be confined to Nicaraguan territory.
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