PASTORA PROMISES SEPTEMBER DRIVE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000504880081-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 15, 2010
• Sequence Number: 81
• Publication Date: August 26, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/15: CIA-RDP90-00552R000504880081-9
ARTICLE
ON PAGE
WASHINGTON TIMES
26 August 1983
Pastors promises
September drive
DOS BOCAS, Nicaragua (UPI) -
Eden Pastora, the rebel leader
known as Commander Zero, says
his guerrilla army will launch an
offensive next month against the
leftist Nicaraguan government he
helped put in power.
But he fiercely defended his iso-
lation in southern Nicaragua from
other anti-Sandinista rebels, whom
he has shunned for their alleged
links to the CIA and the former
,laational guard of dictator Anas-
tasio Somoza.
He said the Nicaraguan Demo-
cratic Front (FDN), linked to some
S17 million in covert CIA.aid, has
not accepted his conditions to form
a unified front and therefore he
would continue to operate.single-
handedly from the South.
Pastora, interviewed Saturday
by journalists inside Nicaragua's
remote jungle mountains, claims
he has 3,200 armed men fighting
some 2,500 to 3,000 Nicaraguan sol-
diers.
"September is going to be a
month of hard combat because we
are going to begin an offensive,"
Pastora said, promising "lots of
news from south and central Nica-
ragua'
Pastora gained international
fame as Commander Zero in the
1979 war that toppled the Somoza
dictatorship but he turned against
the Sandinista regime and left
Nicaragua. In May, he opened his
jungle conflict against the regime.
The sparsely populated jungle is
sliced by muddy rivers, including
the San Juan River that separates
Nicaragua from Costa Rica,. and it
is -thick with dense vegetation
where malaria is the biggest health
risk.
The area has scant strategic
value, since it is largely
unpopulatedand produces no eco-
nomically significant products.
A fierce nationalist, Pastore, 46,
calls his guerrillas the "true San-
dinistas;' a reference to Cesar
Augusto Sandino, a guerrilla who
fought the US. Marine occupation
that installed the Somoza family
dynasty in the 1930s.
He called the nine-member San-
dinista directorate that runs the
Managua government a "political
oligarchy" made up of "university
Marxists" out of touch with politi-
cal reality.
Pastora would not say where his
arms came from, except they were
supplied by "private sources" He
said weapons were bought in the
United States and smuggled into
Nicaragua, presumably along the
San Juan River from Costa Rica.
The rebels displayed newly
arrived supplies of jungle ham-
mocks, ponchos, boots and other
equipment to the journalists who
trudged through the jungle and
rowed in small boats on the river to
meet Pastora in Dos Bocas,
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/15: CIA-RDP90-00552R000504880081-9