"We will not abandon the resistance fighters to face advanced Soviet weaponry and Cuban advisers with their resources exhausted," he said.

The air force had over 150 combat aircraft with about 7,000 officers who were watched over by an estimated 5,000 Cuban and Czechoslovak advisers.

This is a Nicaragua that receives no Soviet military aid and has no Cuban advisers.

The State Department says there are more than 2,500 Cuban military advisers in Nicaragua.

Cuban advisers and volunteers flocked to help the new Nicaraguan Government in everything from health care to combat training.

An unknown number of Cuban advisers, believed by diplomats to be in the hundreds, also remain active in the Sandinista Army and security police.

By 1981, there were 230 Soviet and 800 Cuban military advisers still in the country.

A Portuguese newspaper reported that at least 300 Cuban advisers had arrived.

He is known to have recruited and trained the general's personal security detail, which at one time included former Israel soldiers as well as Cuban military advisers.

Later the American commandos learned that the assassinated man was not Garwood but a Cuban adviser, she says.