Honduras Military Ties with Other Countries
Honduran fighter pilots during joint United
States-Honduran military maneuvers
Courtesy Department of Defense, Still Media Records Center
Honduran air force security policeman with Uzi machine
gun
Courtesy Department of Defense, Still Media Records Center
Although not nearly as important to Honduras as is the
United
States--which alone supplied 73 percent of the arms that
Honduras
imported from 1984 to 1988--Israel has also been a
noteworthy
provider of training and sophisticated weaponry to the
Armed Forces
of Honduras. A 1982 visit by a high-level Israeli
delegation headed
by (then) Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and Air Force
General David
Ivry, was followed by an increase in arms deliveries and
training
for Honduras. A dozen Israelis trained the Cobras (the
elite
counterinsurgency unit) and the personal security guards
of former
Honduran presidents Roberto Suazo Córdova and José Azcona
Hoyo
(see Public Security Force
, this ch.). In mid-1983 the New
York
Times reported that significant quantities of weapons
captured
from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) by Israel
in their
1982 invasion of Lebanon were passing through the Honduran
armed
forces to the Contras.
Brazil, France, Britain, and the former West Germany
supplied
about US$70 million worth of arms to Honduras between 1984
and
1988. The total in weapons sales deliveries from both
foreign
government and commercial sources was US$331.7 million
during the
years 1981 to 1990.
Data as of December 1993
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