Sandinistas Provide More Newsprint; Opposition Paper Resumes Publishing

The Sandinista government sent four truckloads of newsprint Monday to La Prensa, enabling Nicaragua’s only opposition newspaper to resume publication today after two weeklong suspensions.

But La Prensa’s editors said the 42-ton supply will run out within two weeks, again leaving them at the mercy of state controls.

The government manages the distribution of all newsprint in Nicaragua. With both pro-government newspapers publishing normally, La Prensa closed the week before Easter to save its dwindling paper supply and then ran out of paper with last Tuesday’s edition.

La Prensa charges that the government, by withholding paper, is violating its pledge, under preliminary peace accords with other Central American governments and the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan rebels, to allow “unrestricted freedom of expression.”

“This is a new way of controlling us,” said Cristiana Chamorro, an editor at La Prensa.

The government shut La Prensa in June, 1986. The paper was allowed to reopen last Oct. 1 under the terms of the Central American peace accord.

Sandinista officials said last week that there was a paper shortage, caused by the delay of a Soviet freighter that now is due to arrive April 21. They said Barricada and Nuevo Diario, the other newspapers here, are able to continue publishing because they have received donated newsprint from the Soviet Union and Sweden.