MANAGUA -- (AP) -- A former Sandinista who had a bitter split with the leftist party is now accusing it of once plotting to kill Arnoldo Alemán, who is now Nicaragua's president.

 Carlos Guadamuz, former head of the party's radio stations and once a prison cellmate of Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, made the accusations Thursday in the
 afternoon daily La Noticia.

 Guadamuz said a Sandinista team planned to kill Alemán in 1995 when he was mayor of Managua, but he said it ``was suspended at the last minute.'' Alemán defeated Ortega in the 1996 presidential campaign.

 Guadamuz claimed the plan was directed by Dionisio Marenco, the chief of Ortega's presidential campaign for the Nov. 4 election this year. Polls show Ortega leading a three-way race.

 Silvio Mora, a spokesman for the Sandinista National Liberation Front, dismissed Guadamuz's charge. ``We are not going to comment on what a lunatic says,'' he said.

 Guadamuz was a close friend of Ortega during the Sandinistas' days as guerrillas in the 1960s and '70s, and shared a cell with Ortega for several years when the two
 were jailed for anti-government activities.

 He was director of state-run Radio Nicaragua under the Sandinista government that ended in 1990 and then headed a group that founded the party's private Radio Ya, allegedly using equipment foreign governments had donated to the former government. In 1996, Guadamuz was the unsuccessful Sandinista candidate for mayor of Managua.

 It was after that election -- in which Ortega was also defeated for the presidency -- that he began to part ways with the party leadership, criticizing Ortega and others in public. The party ousted Guadamuz from the radio station in December 1999 after he ripped an agreement between Ortega and Alemán that increased their parties' power at the expense of smaller factions.

 Since then, Guadamuz has joined the Christian Path party and was its candidate for mayor last year, receiving few votes.

                                    © 2001