By Ivan Castro MANAGUA, Nicaragua, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Nicaragua's leftist president-elect, Daniel Ortega, asked the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for help on Thursday to fight hunger in the dirt-poor country he once ruled as a Marxist revolutionary. Ortega, who led Nicaragua through a civil war with U.S.-backed Contra rebels in the 1980s, bounced back to power in a presidential election earlier this month and is now trying to win support for an assault on deep poverty in the country. He met early on with conservative rivals and investors, promising to keep the economy stable and work with his old cold war enemy the United States when he takes office in January. Ortega and his economic team met on Thursday with officials from multilateral lenders; the IMF, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. "We expressed our priority, the fight against hunger," Ortega said after the meeting. Officials from the institutions said afterward that Ortega had reiterated his promise to maintain macroeconomic stability to ensure continuing international financial support. Local IMF representative Humberto Arbulu said the fund's current program with the government of outgoing President Enrique Bolanos ended on Dec. 12 and that the organization hoped to strike a fresh agreement soon with Ortega's economic team. Arbulu said the existing agreement "paves the way for a new plan, a new program, in which we will obviously find a way to help the new government." Ortega's Sandinista movement confiscated businesses and farms in the 1980s after toppling a U.S.-backed dictator. The policies combined with a U.S. economic blockade and a war against U.S.-backed Contra rebels plunged the coffee-producing nation into chaos. Ortega says he has learned his lesson and has dropped Marxism for a center-left program. When he takes office he will try to walk a political tightrope, pulling in help from leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro for anti-poverty programs without upsetting the United States. The White House says he will have to earn U.S. support by showing his commitment to democracy.
