Prospect of Sandinista's return worries United States

With 16,000 troops on standby to curb election violence, Nicaraguans went to the polls yesterday in an election that may dramatically alter the strategic balance of power in the hemisphere.

The United States fears that a victory by the former Sandinista revolutionary Daniel Ortega over Enrique Bolanos, a businessman whose sugar plantations Ortega once confiscated, would cause an "iron Communist triangle" to emerge in Latin America comprising Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Voters include those as young as 16 who are too young to remember the violence of the Reagan-era conflict that left 30,000 Nicaraguans dead or the Sandinistas' socialist policies, blamed for wrecking the economy.

The US advisers now in key positions in the new Bush administration are the same men who mined Nicaragua's harbour and slapped a punishing embargo on Nicaragua because of Sandinista links to Moscow and Havana.

Nicaragua's 2.8 million voters are closely divided between supporters of Mr Bolanos, a wealthy centre-right politician who failed to curb massive corruption in the current government, and mostly poor supporters of Mr Ortega.

If they choose Mr Ortega, the US may cut foreign aid programmes and investments, a serious threat to a country where more than 80 per cent live in poverty and unemployment tops 50 per cent.

- INDEPENDENT