NICARAGUA: Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega slashes his salary as part of government austerity plan

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega slashes his own salary and says he wants to have relations with Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. Nicaragua's new leftist President Daniel Ortega has slashed his salary from around 8,000 U.S. dollars (USD) to 3,200 (USD) a month as part of a government austerity plan. Ortega, a former Marxist rebel who ruled in the 1980s and took office again on Jan. 10, said on Monday (January 22) he was cutting his own salary as well as those of ministers and senior civil servants after seeing the government wage bill. He made the announcement at a Monday (January 22) news conference, his first since being sworn in as President. Ortega has promised to reduce the poverty that has made Nicaragua one of the most underdeveloped countries in the Americas. The Nicaraguan leader also told Washington on Monday that it cannot stop him forming alliances with anti-U.S. leaders in Iran, Cuba and Venezuela. Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla, has courted Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and upgraded diplomatic ties to Cuba since winning an election last November. Concern in Washington was raised further when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad paid a high-profile visit to Managua earlier this month. "No one can say to us - nor can we say to anyone, to no state, to no country - you can have relations with these countries, but not with these countries. This is a right of each country, of each town, of each state. So we are - in a sovereign way - opening relations with all these countries," Ortega said. The United States has a long history of intervention in Nicaragua and sponsored right-wing Contra rebels who waged a civil war against Ortega's Sandinista government in the 1980s. Some 30,000 people died and Ortega was booted out of office in 1990 by voters tired of the conflict. Chavez, who told Washington on Sunday to "go to hell," gives cheap fuel and fertilizer to Nicaragua and will build an oil refinery here. Ortega said Venezuela will also aid Nicaragua, the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, to build a road link between its Pacific and Caribbean coasts. Nicaragua's transport minister said in an interview published on Monday that the Venezuelan army will help construct around 310 miles (500 km) of road inland from the Caribbean port of Puerto Cabezas at a cost of 350 million (USD). Ortega says he will not pull out of the Central American Free Trade Agreement between regional countries and the United States but he complained the pact was defective because Central America did not negotiate it as one bloc.

ITN Source | January 23, 2007

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