General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US military has helped the Nicaraguans secure the missiles in a special facility.

The diclosure came amid heightened US concern that commercial airliners are vulnerable to terrorist attacks with portable surface-to-air missiles.

A British national was arrested this week in Newark, New Jersey on charges of trying to smuggle a Russian-made SA-7 shoulder-fired missile into the United States. Two others were also detained for financing the deal.

"Nicaragua has about 2,000 SA-7 missiles and later versions of surface-to-air missiles," Myers said at a question and answer session with Defense Department employees.

"The president down there has agreed that these will be destroyed," he said. "In the meantime, they have been secured in a facility that we have helped with in terms of the technical means of security to make sure they don't fall into the hands of the wrong type of people."

Myers, who recently returned from a trip to Nicaragua and other Latin American countries, said the US military also was trying to find such weapons in Iraq and other places around them world.

"Getting intelligence from the Iraqi people, we've found lots of these weapons systems," he said.

"It's important we scoop them up so they don't wind up in the black market and the hands of terrorists," he said.

SPACE.WIRE