Nicaragua should keep Cold War missiles -Ortega

MANAGUA, Feb 3 (Reuters) President Daniel Ortega has said Nicaragua should keep its arsenal of more than 1,000 Cold War-era anti-aircraft missiles, which Washington has repeatedly said it wants destroyed.

Ortega, an erstwhile Marxist revolutionary leader who won a November election and returned to office after 16 years in opposition, said it was unfair for Washington to expect Nicaragua to destroy the missiles when it was giving planes to neighboring Honduras.

Honduras, which has the biggest air force in Central America, said last week the United States had offered it around 10 small reconnaissance aircraft. It said they would be for spotting illegal logging or drug smugglers rather than combat.

Nicaragua's military has Soviet-made helicopters but no airplanes.

''If on the one hand they are going to renovate the Honduran air force, an air force of war, a military air force, and on the other hand they are going to ask us to destroy the rockets, it would be absurd, inconceivable,'' Ortega said.

To placate Washington, which says the shoulder-fired SAM-7 missiles could be used by terrorists to attack airliners, Nicaragua destroyed 1,000 missiles in 2004 out of the 2,000 donated by the Soviet Union when Ortega's government was fighting a 1980s civil war against US-backed rebels.

Congress is now considering a proposal by former President Enrique Bolanos to destroy a further 650 of the missiles, keeping the remaining 400 for self-defense purposes.

Ortega told lawmakers the proposal was unacceptable when Honduras was adding to its fleet of aircraft.

''Even if they aren't upgrading it, the fact that Honduras has an air force, and El Salvador too, and we do not -- that explains why Nicaragua has the missiles,'' he said.

''I want to raise the attention of deputies in the National Assembly that ... independently of our political differences, we have to watch over the sovereignty of our country.'' Reuters MQA DB1137