Ex-Sandinista Leader Voices Support for U.S.

Daniel Ortega, a pariah in Washington during the 1980s as leader of Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government, said he backs the U.S. war on terrorism. “The U.S. government stance is to combat, eradicate and isolate this type of terrorist attack, and we fully share this position,” Ortega told reporters.

Ortega helped lead the revolution that deposed dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979 and later fought U.S.-backed Contra rebels in a civil war that claimed about 30,000 lives.

Ortega, who was voted out of power in 1990, is locked in a dead heat with businessman Enrique Bolanos in the run-up to the Nov. 4 presidential elections, according to a poll taken this month by the private company M&R.;