MANAGUA -- The state-run Nicaraguan Institute of Culture, or INC, barred novelist and former Vice President Sergio Ramirez from writing the prologue to an anthology of poetry due to be published next spring.

Managua newspapers cited Sunday a statement by Ramirez, who served as vice president in the 1979-1990 Sandinista government, in which he denounces the INC decision as "an official act of censorship by the Nicaraguan government."

Ramirez is one of a number of prominent Sandinistas who are at odds with the party's autocratic leader, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

The INC said it has the right to decide who should write the prologue to the poetry volume because the intellectual property rights of Nicaragua's Carlos Martinez Rivas (1924-1998) were awarded to the government instutute by the poet's family.

Spain's El País newspaper asked for INC authorization to publish part of the poet's work with an introduction by Ramirez, but the response of Managua authorities was negative.

According to a story in last Saturday's El Pais, the INC's Hector Avellan said that "we'll renew the process for this edition of the book if the idea is accepted that (the author of the prologue) will be a Spanish author or someone else who presents (the work) of Martinez Rivas. Only in that way will we give our approval."

For his part, Ramirez said that he received word of the prohibition at the International Book Fair in Guadalajara, Mexico.

He said that "this is not an INC matter, I don't want to see it that way. This is an official act of censorship by the Nicaraguan government against a writer in reprisal for his critical opinions."

The award-winning author warned that the Managua government's next step "could be to stop the arrival of my books at customs as a form of censorship and reprisal."

A group of Latin American writers attending the Guadalajara Book Fair this week issued a statement condemning the "official censorship."

"No government can assume the legal authority to veto or ban the words of a writer, and such an act can only be described as totalitarian," said the declaration signed by literary heavyweights such as Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Fernando Savatier, Tomas Eloy Martinez and Carlos Monsivais.