U.S. May Contribute $3 Million to Nicaragua Opposition Campaign

Bush Administration is planning tentatively to intervene in Nicaragua’s general elections in February by openly using the federally funded National Endowment for Democracy to contribute up to $3 million to opposition candidate Violeta Barrios de Chamorro’s campaign against President Daniel Ortega.

The Administration, which regards the elections as a chance to end control of Nicaragua by Ortega’s Marxist-led Sandinista National Liberation Front, had been debating whether U.S. efforts to influence the outcome should be conducted secretly by the Central Intelligence Agency or overtly through the Endowment.

However, sources familiar with the situation said the Administration’s soundings on Capitol Hill have indicated that any attempt to resume covert CIA operations in Nicaragua would encounter strong Democratic opposition. For more than a century, U.S. intervention in Nicaragua has caused resentment there.

Divisive Issue

Under former President Ronald Reagan, the most divisive issue in U.S. foreign policy was his support of the Contras’ guerrilla war against the Sandinistas and the use of the CIA for such destabilizing tactics as the mining of Nicaraguan harbors.

But, the sources said, there appears to be strong sentiment now--even among many Democrats opposed to a resumption of covert CIA activities--for making an open, undisguised contribution to Chamorro as a means of demonstrating U.S. support for democracy in Nicaragua.

As a result, the sources continued, within the next few days Secretary of State James A. Baker III tentatively plans to approach Congress with a request to reprogram a still undetermined amount of funds for use in Nicaragua.

May Send Monitors

Some of the money would be earmarked for such purposes as sending election monitors to Nicaragua or helping resettle Contras now in neighboring Honduras who want to return home and participate in the electoral process.

The sources said it was not clear whether these activities would be run by the Endowment--a private, nonprofit organization that receives all of its funding from Congress--or put under the U.S. Agency for International Development.

But the tentative plan calls for putting between $2 million and $3 million into Nicaragua to help finance the campaign of Chamorro, widow of a conservative newspaper editor whose murder in 1978 helped to fuel the revolution against the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. She was nominated last Saturday as the presidential candidate of an opposition coalition of 14 political parties, ranging from the far right to non-Sandinista Marxists.