BY FRANCES ROBLES

 MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- A top U.S. State Department official is visiting Nicaragua today to speak on the Bush administration's policy toward Latin America -- and is expected to use the trip to schedule controversial meetings with presidential candidates.

 Lino Gutiérrez, the No. 2 diplomat in the State Department's Western Hemisphere Bureau, will address the American Chamber of Commerce of Nicaragua today. The former ambassador to Nicaragua will spend the afternoon meeting with ``friends,'' the embassy here said.

 Among those on his schedule are Noel Vidaurre and José Antonio Alvarado, running together on the Conservative Party ticket in Nicaragua's hotly contested presidential race. The pair scores third place in virtually all polls and is widely considered to be the force that could split the right-wing vote, catapulting leftist former President Daniel Ortega back into office.

 It was Ortega's 11-year Sandinista Party reign in the 1980s that led the Reagan administration to support anti-communist rebels. After seizing properties, censuring the press, nationalizing banks and fighting the U.S. backed rebels, Ortega left office when he lost a democratic election to Violeta Chamorro.

 U.S. officials denied reports that Gutiérrez plans to use his trip to nudge the fractured anti-left political parties into forming a single alliance to trample Ortega at the Nov. 5 election.

 ``We seek a free, fair and democratic election,'' a U.S. official in Washington said Thursday. ``However, we continue to have concerns about Daniel Ortega, absent his clear commitment to democracy. But we will support the will of the people.''

 Josefina Vannini, spokeswoman for the Vidaurre-Alvarado campaign, confirmed that the two candidates were invited by the U.S. Embassy here to meet with Gutiérrez after his chamber luncheon.

 ``We don't have information that he's coming here to pressure anyone,'' said Vannini, a former consul general at the Nicaraguan consulate in Miami. ``I don't think the United States will try to interfere.''

 Nicaraguan election law allow the first-place winner to take office if he or she wins 35 percent of the vote and is at least five points ahead. The latest polls show Ortega ahead with 37 percent of the vote, and governing Liberal Constitutional Party candidate Enrique Bolaños seven points behind.

                                    © 2001