Ortega bans entry to Nicaragua on OAS diplomatic mission

Nicaragua on Saturday banned the entry of seven diplomats eager to promote a dialogue with the government in the face of the crisis in the country, including the US ambbadador. before the OAS, Carlos Trujillo and Gonzalo Koncke, chief of staff of the secretary general of the organization, Luis Almagro, according to a document consulted by Efe.

Trujillo, Koncke and five other diplomats had planned to travel to Nicaragua to try to talk to President Daniel Ortega and find a way out of the crisis that began on April 18, 2018, and left hundreds dead. , prisoners and missing, in addition to thousands of Nicaraguans in exile.

Some of the diplomats that Ortega decided yesterday to prevent access to Nicaragua are part of a commission created in late August by the Organization of American States (OAS). This entity has a period of 75 days to try to negotiate with Ortega.

If this commission fails and Ortega refuses to engage in dialogue, the OAS could suspend Nicaragua, the largest form of sanction available to this organization, which for the past 70 years has been used only twice: with Honduras, 2009 coup d'etat; and with Cuba after the triumph of the Fidel Castro revolution in 1959.

The commission is composed of Trujillo and four other members: the Under-Secretary of American Affairs of the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Leopoldo Francisco Sahores; Panama's representative to the OAS, Elisa Ruiz Díaz; as well as Sébastien Sigouin, head of Central America at the Department of Foreign Affairs of Canada; and Audrey Marks, Ambbadador to the OAS of Jamaica.

Koncke and an OAS press officer also accompanied the commission.

Koncke, as Chief of Staff of Almagro, closely followed the work done by the General Secretariat as guarantor and witness of the attempts of dialogue between the Nicaraguan Government and the Civic Alliance. opposition, suspended because of the impossibility of reaching agreements. Diplomats have since been banned from entering the country of Central America, as stated in a document of the General Directorate of Migration and Foreigners of Nicaragua, approved by Efe.

Specifically, the Directorate General of Migration and Aliens has warned nine airlines, including Panamanian companies Copa Airlines and US companies Delta, United and Spirit, so that they do not allow any diplomat to take charge. plane to get to Nicaragua. .