Nicaragua expelled 10 foreign Roman Catholic priests who participated in a march by clergymen in protest of the confinement of a priest accused of having rebel ties, authorities said.
The Immigration Department of the Nicaraguan Interior Ministry issued a statement saying the ruling leftist Sandinista Front canceled the residence permits of 10 priests of the Managua diocese for 'participating in plans aimed at creating conflict between the Catholic Church and the Sandinista revolution.'
About 30 priests and 100 others participated in the nearly mile-long march in south Managua, staged to protest the jailing of the Rev. Luis Amado Pena. No incidents were reported even though the ruling Sandinistas have prohibited street demonstrations and political rallies since imposing a state of emergency in March 1982.
'We are persecuted, but not abandoned. We are humiliated but not crushed,' Archbishop Obando y Bravo said during a mass following the demonstration.
Pena was charged June 20 with belonging to an urban guerrilla group. Officials played a videotape for reporters showing Pena meeting the group's confessed commander.
The church has called the charges a 'setup and propaganda by the Sandinista regime to implicate the church in subversive activity.'
The Interior Ministry said the expelled priests are Francisco San Martin, Vicente Caudeli, Santiago Aniuta and Francisco Castel of Spain, Mario Madriz of El Salvador, Benito Laplante of Canada, Miguel Huerta of Costa Rica and Jose Luis Montero of Costa Rica and Mario Frendi and Benito Pitito of Italy.
Relations between the church and the Nicaraguan government hit a low point in April when the Bishop's Conference issued a pastoral letter calling for dialogue with U.S.-funded rebels fighting to topple the 5-year-old regime. The Sandinistas have opposed such talks.
In El Salvador, a group of visiting U.S. House members said Monday they found no evidence the U.S.-backed Salvadoran army was misusing military aid from Washington.
Five Democrats and three Republicans of the House Armed Services Committee's investigations subcommittee held separate meetings in El Salvador with President Jose Napoleon Duarte and rightist leader Roberto d'Aubuisson.
Rep. Larry Hopkins, R-Ky., ranking minority member of the subcommittee, said the panel had not come across any evidence to substantiate reports of misuse of U.S. funds.
'I haven't seen anything to back that up,' Hopkins told a news conference.
Rep. Bill Nichols, D-Ala., the subcommittee chairman, said the panel had only heard 'rumors' about alleged gun-running by Salvadoran military personnel to the country's Marxist-led guerrillas.
In Honduras, Salvadoran Foreign Minister Eduardo Tenorio met with President Roberto Suazo Cordova in what a Honduran government official said were efforts to secure continued training of Salvadoran troops by U.S. Green Berets in Honduras.
Honduras last week announced it was reviewing a 1954 military agreement with the United States under which 120 U.S. Green Berets train Salvadoran and Honduran troops near Puerto Castilla, on the Caribbean coast.
