REGION: SHOTS FIRED IN DISPUTE REGARDING CARIBBEAN BOUNDARY BETWEEN HONDURAS & NICARAGUA.

The dispute between Honduras and Nicaragua over their Caribbean maritime boundary turned ugly as the two sides traded insults regarding a shooting incident in the Gulf of Fonseca on the Pacific Coast.

Nicaragua has challenged the Lopez-Ramirez Treaty, ratified by Honduras and Colombia,

On Feb. 19, the Nicaraguans say Honduran soldiers aboard a Honduran naval launch fired on a Nicaraguan naval boat in the gulf near the town of Potosi. No injuries were reported.

A week before the incident, Honduran fishers threatened to arm themselves against the Nicaraguan navy, which has impounded Honduran fishing boats for allegedly operating in Nicaraguan waters. This longstanding problem is caused in part by the lack of boundary markers in the Gulf of Fonseca, shared by Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador.

Jorge Varela, head of the Honduran Comite Pro Defensa de la Flora y Fauna del Golfo de Fonseca (CODEFFAGOl), said his organization had lodged a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington regarding the detentions. He said that Nicaragua had impounded 33 Honduran fishing boats in the gulf in 1999 and five in January of this year. Nicaraguan practice is to release the captured boats after the owners pay a fine.

At the same time, a fight flared up concerning Cayo Sur, one of the disputed Caribbean islands. The Nicaraguan military warned Honduras on Feb. 13 to remove its troops from the island.

There is nothing on Cayo Sur, "it's an island with nothing," said Nicaraguan armed forces chief Gen. Joaquin Cuadra. He said Honduras must have been supplying its troops on the island under great difficulties because it does not even have potable water.

"They have 30 days to leave Cayo Sur and return to the positions they had before the ratification of the [boundary] treaty," he said, adding that Nicaraguan armed forces "know how to fight."

Honduran Defense Minister Edgardo Dumas Rodriguez dismissed Cuadra's warnings as posturing by a general ready to retire. He noted that the bellicose statement contrasted sharply with the calm diplomacy underway between the two nations.

Beginning a confusing and contradictory string of official statements, Dumas said Honduras always had a small military force on the island because it was considered Honduran national territory. But Honduran Foreign Minister Roberto Flores seemed uncertain about the troops. He denied any troops were on the island, "but if there are, it's because we have had a presence, and we are going to discuss it at the diplomatic level."

Dumas also hedged later, saying, "If he [Cuadra] says we have a presence on that key, it's true, we always did have it. It isn't a case of right now, and what we have always had are four cats, not an army as he says."

The Defense Minister and the Honduran Armed Forces took five foreign military attaches from Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the US, and Venezuela to Cayo Sur to see for themselves that there were no troops there, even though the government seemed to have confirmed that there were.

The attaches agreed there were no troops, no military facilities, and no sign there had ever been any. Dumas did not explain what happened to the "four cats" who may or may not have been deployed on the island.

The confusion left unanswered Gen. Cuadra's charge that the Honduran government had sent troops to the island to strengthen its claim in the boundary dispute before The Hague tribunal.

Advances in negotiations

Since the start of talks in December--mediated by US diplomat Luigi Einaudi--the two sides have met in Miami, Washington, and San Salvador and have reached important agreements that seemed to lessen tensions.

In a Feb. 8 meeting in San Salvador, they accepted an eight-point agreement that included a commitment to resolve their dispute peacefully, to abide by the decision of The Hague tribunal, to return their police and military to positions they occupied as of Sept. 1, and to respect a military-exclusion zone set up in the disputed area. The next set of talks is scheduled for Washington in March.

Each side says the other fired first

The Feb. 19 gunfire in the gulf threatened to undermine the San Salvador agreements, which both sides regarded as a major breakthrough.

A report by Nicaraguan army public-relations officer Maj. Deiglis Tinoco said two Honduran naval boats violated Nicaraguan territorial waters, coming to within 1,800 meters of land near the town of Potosi, and then fired on a Nicaraguan naval vessel sent out to chase them off.

Later, one of the Honduran boats reappeared offshore and fired a second time on the naval vessel.

Gen. Javier Carrion, who took over from Cuadra as Nicaraguan armed forces chief on Feb. 21, promised to defend the national sovereignty "at whatever cost."

Nicaraguan Foreign Relations Minister Jose Adan Guerra said the government had lodged a complaint with Honduras and asked Einaudi for a special representative to investigate the incident.

Rolando Gonzalez Flores, commandant of the Honduran Fuerza Naval, denied that the Honduran vessel had fired first or had entered Nicaraguan territory.

"That information is false, since we have respected the treaties, laws, and maritime boundaries," he said. He claimed that the incident occurred in Honduran, not Nicaraguan, waters and that the Honduran naval vessels were in the area to protect Honduran fishing boats from capture by the Nicaraguan navy. Nicaraguans fired first, and "our unit had no choice but to reply, but it was in our territory," Gonzalez said. [Sources: The Miami Herald, 02/09/00; El Nuevo Herald (Miami), 02/14/00; Agence France-Presse, 02/14/00, 02/17/00; La Prensa (Honduras), 02/15/00, 02/19/00; El Tiempo (Honduras), 02/20/00; Reuters, 02/15/00, 02/20/00; Notimex, 02/11/00, 02/17/00, 02/21/00; El Nuevo Diario (Nicaragua), 02/17/00, 02/20/00, 02/21/00]