U.S. Drops Plan to Help Fund Nicaragua Candidate

The Bush Administration, retreating under congressional pressure, abandoned on Friday its idea of helping to finance the presidential election campaign of Nicaraguan opposition leader Violeta Barrios de 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.

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 bipartisan opposition.

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.”