Nation : Baker Urges Soviets to Stop Arms Flow to Salvador Rebels
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WASHINGTON — Secretary of State James A. Baker III urged the Kremlin today to stop the flow of Soviet-made weapons to leftist rebels in El Salvador and said President Bush will press Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev at their weekend summit to abandon this “Cold War relic.”
Baker said that despite repeated and specific reassurances from Moscow of a cutoff, the arms are still flowing from Cuba and Nicaragua to rebels fighting the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government.
“Either the Nicaraguans are lying to the Soviet Union or the Soviet Union is lying to us,” he said at a White House news conference. “We prefer to think it’s the former.”
Baker commented as Bush prepared to depart Thursday evening for his first summit meeting with Gorbachev, a weekend of talks aboard U.S. and Soviet warships in the Mediterranean off the island of Malta.
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