Nicaragua says bars new US envoy, questions ties with Dutch

Nicaragua said Friday that the new US ambassador would not be granted entry due to his “interfering” attitude, as firebrand President Daniel Ortega warned he may consider severing ties with the Netherlands.

The US envoy, Hugo Rodriguez, “will not under any circumstances be admitted into our Nicaragua,” said Vice President Rosario Murillo, who is also Ortega’s wife.

“Let that be clear to the imperialists,” she added, reading a statement from the foreign office on state media.

The US Senate confirmed Rodriguez’s appointment Thursday, despite Nicaragua having said in July it would reject him.

Nicaragua said it decided to withdraw its approval of Rodriguez because of “disrespectful” comments he made in a hearing before the Senate.

Rodriguez described Nicaragua as a “pariah state in the region” and branded Ortega’s government a “dictatorship.”

“I would support using all economic and diplomatic tools to bring about a change in direction in Nicaragua,” he told the Senate.

One such measure he suggested was kicking Nicaragua out of the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement.

Later in the day Ortega, a former revolutionary, accused the Netherlands of “interventionist” policies and said he no longer wished to maintain relations with the European nation after learning it will not fund a long-promised hospital.

“Those who come to disrespect our people, our homeland, they should not appear again in Nicaragua. And we do not want relations with that interventionist government,” Ortega said in reference to the Dutch ambassador for Central America, Christine Pirenne, who is based in Costa Rica.

According to the president, during a visit to the capital Managua on Thursday Pirenne informed Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister Denis Moncada that the Dutch will no longer finance a hospital that they promised to build years ago.

“The ambassador came to speak to Nicaraguans as if Nicaragua is a Dutch colony,” Ortega said.

He did not specify whether his government would formalize a rupture in ties with the Netherlands, which in 2013 closed its offices in Managua and conducts all its Central American diplomatic work from Costa Rica.

On Wednesday the government asked the European Union ambassador Bettina Muscheidt to leave the country without giving any reasons, according to local media and diplomatic sources.

Also on Wednesday, Ortega branded the Catholic Church a “perfect dictatorship,” reflecting ongoing tensions between his government and the religious institution over 2018 protests that Ortega has accused the church of backing.