Prepare to stop money transfers, congressman says

Prepare to stop money transfers, congressman says
Tells Homeland Security chief funds could help terrorists

A Georgia congressman has joined a chorus of congressional leaders asking Department of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff to prepare some way to halt the transfer of funds from the United States into Nicaragua, should Daniel Ortega win the presidential election in Nicaragua Sunday.

The letter from U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, vice chairman of the House Republican Conference and fifth in the leadership rankings in the House, to Chertoff noted that "el Comandante" Ortega and his Sandinistas ran Nicaragua while President Reagan was in office, a time when that nation was by Reagan's assessment, "one of the world's principal refuges for international terrorists."

"Should Daniel Ortega and his FSLN once again wield absolute power in Nicaragua, our government would have no reliable partner in Managua with whom to work to address pressing bilateral and international security concerns," Kingston said.

"We would, therefore, have reason to be concerned that terrorist groups would benefit from funds generated in this country and sent home by Nicaraguans living here in the form of remittances," he said.

He said that funding has been estimated to have totaled $2.5 billion over the last five years.

"Under these circumstances, it is incumbent on your department, in coordination with such other agencies as are appropriate, to ready the measures required to block further remittances from being sent to Nicaragua in the event that the FSLN enters government," he said.

Kingston noted that during Ortega's earlier regime, Nicaragua had a practice of issuing Nicaraguan passports to international terrorists to facilitate their movement across borders. Five of those turned up in the hands of one suspect arrested in 1993 following the first attack on the World Trade Center, he said.

The Sandinista party also is backed "by the world's most virulently anti-American regimes – including, notably, those of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran and Fidel Castro in Cuba." Ortega's also been close to North Korea.

Polls are showing the Sandinista leader very close to the 35 percent of the vote necessary.

Four other Republican House members earlier suggested such a cutoff. As WND reported, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., chairman of the International Relations Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, wrote to Chertoff with a request that contingency plans to shut down money transfers be developed.

Joining Rohrabacher with expressions of concerns were Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who wrote to the Nicaraguan ambassador to the U.S. warning about the possible consequences of an Ortega win, and Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif. and Rep. Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, who wrote a separate letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

This is Ortega's third comeback attempt after being voted out in 1990.

Recently, both Daniel Ortega and his brother, Humberto, paid official state visits to North Korea seeking assistance and formal relations. Also, recently, the prime minister of Iran visited Nicaragua, expressing "solidarity from the ayatollah for the Sandinista communists."

A victory by Ortega would spell a major turnaround in U.S.-Nicaragua relations, because the current government is very cooperative with Washington.