The Sun-Herald / The Sydney Morning Herald
By DUNCAN CAMPBELL
in LOS ANGELES
Saturday 7 April 2001

President George W. Bush's nominee for the post of US ambassador to the United Nations concealed from Congress human rights abuses in Central America carried out by death squads trained and armed by the CIA.

John Negroponte, the UN choice, and Otto Reich, who has been named to a senior Latin American post, were also closely linked with the illegal contra war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

Mr Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 and was in a position to assist in the war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and rebels in El Salvador.

The CIA helped train an organisation called Battalion 3-16 that carried out the torture and "disappearing" of 184 people in Honduras deemed to be politically suspect. Some members of the battalion lived in the US, but were deported just as Mr Bush's selection of Mr Negroponte was announced. Now one of them is threatening to blow the whistle.

General Discua Elvir, a founder of the battalion, who has been deported to Honduras, told the local newspaper La Prensa that he was brought to the US to coordinate the battalion with the contras. The right-wing contras were illegally funded by arms sales to Iran.

Mr Negroponte's predecessor in Honduras, Jack Binns, was replaced after alerting Washington about extra-judicial executions by the Honduran authorities.

"It's very troubling," said Reed Brody, of Human Rights Watch. "When John Negroponte was ambassador, he looked the other way when serious atrocities were committed. One would have to wonder what kind of message the Bush administration is sending about human rights by this appointment."