State Dept. Drops Plan to Fund Nicaragua Candidate : Met Strong Opposition in Congress

The Bush Administration, retreating under congressional pressure, today abandoned its idea of helping to finance the presidential election campaign of Nicaraguan opposition leader Violetta Chamorro through a U.S.-financed private organization.

While the National Endowment for Democracy should play an active role in ensuring a free and fair election, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, the United States will not ask the group to go beyond election activities permitted by its charter.

Chamorro is campaigning to defeat Daniel Ortega, the Nicaraguan president, in a national election next February. All U.S. efforts, including past weapons shipments to anti-government rebels known as Contras, have failed to unseat the Sandinista leader.

Congress Sounded Out

Secretary of State James A. Baker III sounded out members of Congress earlier this week on providing about $2 million in U.S. funds to Chamorro, the publisher of the leading opposition newspaper, La Prensa, through the endowment. Baker encountered stiff opposition from Democrats and Republicans alike.

Boucher said the group’s charter permits it “to support election activities in a general sense. We don’t intend to ask it to do anything that’s beyond its charter.”

The group, which gets its money from Congress, engaged in such activities as voter registration and education, poll watching and policing of vote counting in the Philippines, Panama, Poland and Chile. “The National Endowment for Democracy has gone a long way toward supporting the democratic process,” Boucher said. “We’re confident that it can do so in Nicaragua.”

He said there were other options for assisting Chamorro, the widow of La Prensa’s assassinated publisher, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, including private aid, but no final decision had been taken.