U.S. Threatens to Shun Nicaraguan Business if President Is Ousted

By JOEL BRINKLEY
Published: October 6, 2005

MANAGUA, Nicaragua, Oct. 5 - Robert B. Zoellick, the deputy secretary of state, warned business leaders here on Wednesday that they should not continue supporting the political parties that are trying unseat Nicaragua’s president if they hoped to continue doing business with the United States.

"Your opportunities will be lost," Mr. Zoellick said he told the businessmen.

On the second day of a visit here, Mr. Zoellick also met with politicians who said they intended to oppose the parties trying to unseat President Enrique Bolaños.

In his meetings, he raised the level of the warnings he issued to Nicaraguan leaders over the consequences of trying to unseat the president before a regularly scheduled election next year.

"I am only telling the truth," he said.

Former President Daniel Ortega, a leftist who is a longtime opponent of United States policy in Latin America, has been allied with Arnoldo Alemán, a conservative former president who has been convicted of embezzling $100 million from the Nicaraguan treasury. Their partnership, known as "the pact," has been working to try to force Mr. Bolaños from office so they can can gain power.

Mr. Zoellicks’s threats and entreaties appear to be bearing fruit. In an interview, senior members of Mr. Alemán’s governing Constitutionalist Liberal Party said they were backing away from their alliance with Mr. Ortega’s party, the Sandinistas, and would vote to keep Mr. Bolaños in power until the presidential election in November 2006.

"To create more chaos now, in an election year, would not allow us to have stability and not allow us to succeed against the Sandinistas in elections next year," said Carlos Noguera, a senior party member.

Mr. Zoellick said in an interview, "The political ground seems to be shifting." The party leaders told him the same thing, he said, "and I was encouraged by the statement, but we will have to see where it is headed."

The Sandinista party controls the national electoral commission. Nicaraguan and American officials said they were certain that the Sandinistas would try to manipulate election laws and voting results in their favor. Mr. Zoellick announced that the United States would provide more than $4 million to two private American organizations so they could serve as election monitors next year.

Mr. Zoellick also met with several politicians from the Sandinista and governing parties who told him they were pursuing "a third way," an electoral movement that tries to take advantage of the obvious popular disgust over the current state of political affairs.

"I think there is a genuine public movement that suggests that a wide spectrum, a large number of people, have reacted quite negatively to the pact," he said. "But whether democracy will be allowed to work here, that is a different question."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/i...