Former US Ambassador Turns up the Heat on Nicaragua Property Waiver
This is the latest in a series of alerts about an annual waiver that must be granted for Nicaragua to continue receiving aid from the United States. If the waiver is not granted, the United States will also be required to veto all international lending to Nicaragua from the World Bank and the IMF. If those vital loans are taken away, the impact will be immediate, and will reverse many of the precarious gains that the country has made in recent years. This alert is from the Nicaragua Network News Service:
Former US Ambassador to Nicaragua Robert Callahan and Ray Walser wrote an incendiary piece posted on the Heritage Foundation website calling on the Obama administration to refuse to grant a crucial waiver for a US law that prohibits the US government from giving aid to any country involved in property confiscations of US citizens. The absence of the waiver would result in US vetoes for loans and grants to Nicaragua from international financial institutions and a cut-off of US aid. The suspension of the waiver, according to Callahan and Walser, could be the impulse to make the “democratic opposition,” which they strongly criticize for being “unable” to join “around a person, plan or idea,” to put aside their differences and work together to “restore transparency, accountability and the rule of law in the country.” Businessman Cesar Zamora, vice-president of the Association of Latin American Chambers of Commerce, called the Callahan article “disinformation,” specifically referring to the part in the piece that mentioned “defacto confiscations” in the past year of property owned by US citizens. Zamora said there have been five peasant occupations, but that these are not the same as confiscations by the State. The waiver deadline is fast approaching. Go to http://www.nicanet.org/?p=1141 for more information and then call the State Department and your elected officials to demand that the property waiver be extended. (La Prensa, July 13; El Nuevo Diario, July 14; Radio La Primerisima, July 14)