US-led maneuvers begun in Honduras,off coast

The biggest military maneuvers ever held in Central America began as the first of 5,600 US ground troops landed in Honduras. The ''Big Pine II'' exercises, lasting six to eight months, will involve 11, 600 US and Honduran ground troops and 16,000 military personnel aboard 19 warships cruising off Nicaragua's Pacific and Caribbean coasts. The maneuvers, at first called routine by Washington, are acknowledged by Pentagon sources to be a display of US rapid-deployment capability and military might.