U.S. Tells of Mexican Gifts to Ortega Party

In a covert political operation that could prove pivotal in Nicaragua’s hotly contested election, the ruling party of Mexico has secretly contributed more than $11 million in cash and supplies to the reelection campaign of leftist President Daniel Ortega, U.S. officials said Friday.

The contributions, which are said to include thousands of T-shirts, posters and gifts for voters as well as cash, were more than three times as valuable as the estimated $3.3 million in U.S. government aid that has gone to opposition candidate Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the officials said.

Moreover, they charged, the Sandinista campaign failed to report the contributions from Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Commission, as required by the country’s election law.

Mexican officials refused to comment on the U.S. officials’ charges, but Nicaraguan Vice President Sergio Ramirez, Ortega’s running mate, denied them.

“This is a falsehood,” Ramirez said in Managua on Friday evening. “We have declared all the donations we have received. . . . We have received nothing from the Mexican government or the PRI, except advisers.”

But U.S. officials insisted that their charges are true. They said Mexican officials privately admitted the contributions--although they contended that their value was far below $11 million.

“It is a very solid report,” said Bernard Aronson, assistant secretary of state for Latin America. “The Sandinistas appear not to have complied with the very rules that they established.”

Aronson and other Administration officials emphasized that the reported contributions--and the Sandinistas’ failure to report them--cast additional doubt on the fairness of the campaign leading to Sunday’s election.

Under Nicaraguan law, the Sandinistas would be required to report any foreign contributions and to give the Supreme Electoral Council half of any foreign cash donations.

A senior U.S. official said the State Department is informing the leaders of the major international observer groups in Nicaragua--former President Jimmy Carter, former Atty. Gen. Elliot Richardson, and Organization of American States chief Joao Baena Soares--of the report “so they know that something wasn’t square.”

The Mexican donation, which was first reported by the New York newspaper Newsday, could also cause an unexpected strain in the Bush Administration’s so-far friendly relationship with Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

“There’s no desire on our part to muddy the Mexicans with this,” one State Department official was quick to say. “We’re trying to keep the focus on Nicaragua.”

Still, other officials said, the incident was reminiscent of the early 1980s, when Mexico actively sought to thwart U.S. policies in Central America.

“The Mexicans have always seen themselves as a major power in Central America, and the PRI has always had a close relationship with the Sandinistas,” said one. “That may never have changed.”

Mexican officials told U.S. aides that the PRI made the contribution without the knowledge of Salinas or other government officials in Mexico City--an assertion some officials said was difficult to believe if the donations were as large as $11 million.

U.S. officials noted one irony in the discovery that the PRI has also sent advisers to Nicaragua: The PRI is widely held to have stolen Mexico’s last presidential election by stuffing the ballot boxes.

The reported contribution would at least explain one phenomenon in the Nicaraguan election campaign: the sudden appearance in Managua of thousands of handsomely printed Sandinista T-shirts, coffee mugs and other trinkets.

Nicaraguan Vice President Ramirez acknowledged that the Sandinista campaign received about 60,000 T-shirts from Mexico, but he said they had been donated by private “solidarity groups,” not by the government or the PRI.

“Why would they accuse us of getting money from Mexico?” he asked. “I would think they would say it came from Libya, or from the Ayatollah.”

The Sandinistas appear to have easily outspent the opposition during the campaign, but they have reported only about $300,000 in foreign contributions.

Congress has provided $9 million in U.S. aid for the Nicaraguan election, but earmarked most of the money for officially nonpartisan voter registration and election monitoring groups. Approximately $3.3 million of the fund went to the Chamorro campaign and a group closely associated with the campaign.

McManus reported from Washington and Miller reported from Managua.