MANAGUA - Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega on Wednesday predicted worse violence if Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolaños orders the army to end a week of street protests in the capital that saw buses torched and masked protesters firing dangerous fireworks at riot police.
''He can call out the army, he can call out the police. He can call out whatever he wants, but he's not going to scare the people,'' said Ortega, who also denied Bolaños' allegations that the Sandinistas were fomenting the rioting.
Bolaños announced late Tuesday that he had ordered the armed forces to ''maintain permanent vigilance'' after a hail of rocks met his appearance outside the presidential palace in a bid to talk to the protesters.
In Washington, Nicaragua's ambassador to the Organization of American States, Carmen Marina Gutiérrez, told the hemispheric block that the violence was designed to ``destroy the institutionality and democratic foundation in Nicaragua and return to the past by way of coup d'etats and violations.''
''This climate of instability, violence and anguish in the country is being provoked by the ill will of an opposition caudillo who thinks that the only [way] to resolve problems is through violence, insults and disruption of public order,'' she said, referring to Ortega.
The street violence, which has left several dozen people injured and more than 100 arrested -- and has been described as the country's worst in more than five years -- started earlier this month in response to Nicaragua's record-high oil and gasoline prices.
When bus drivers attempted to increase urban fares by 20 percent, university students responded by attacking and burning several buses in the streets of Managua and battling riot police with huge fireworks known here as mortars.
But the demonstrators also appeared to be attacking out of frustration over poverty rather than simply protesting a bus-fare hike. This week, the protests took on a political tone, with the demonstrators calling for Bolaños' resignation.
Government officials met Wednesday with leaders of transportation unions, but a pro-Sandinista student leader was reported to have abandoned the negotiations because Bolaños had not attended the session.
Bolaños is blaming the unrest on Ortega, alleging that the three-time loser in presidential elections was manipulating the crisis to destabilize the government and then offer himself and his Sandinista Front party as peacemakers.
With tensions still running high Wednesday, many Nicaraguans appeared to be putting their hopes for a solution on Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, who has played mediator before.
Bolaños won election on the Liberal Constitutionalist Party ticket, but alienated party leaders when his administration won a corruption conviction against former President Arnoldo Alemán. The Liberals' large faction in Congress has formed a de facto alliance with its traditional Sandinista foes to strip Bolaños of much of his power and pardon Alemán.