MANAGUA, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Nicaragua wants more U.S. support in fighting drug gangs who smuggle South American cocaine north through Central America, President Daniel Ortega told U.S. officials on Monday.

Ortega, a former Marxist revolutionary and U.S. Cold War foe who was reelected president in late 2006, met a U.S. delegation headed by Christy McCampbell, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Counternarcotics, and the DEA's chief of operations, Michael Braun.

"We are counting on this meeting to establish a new stage in relations between the government of Nicaragua and the government of the United States in the fight against drug trafficking," Ortega told reporters.

Last year Ortega, a close ally of Venezuela's firebrand leftist leader Hugo Chavez, said he was wary of the DEA opening surveillance offices in Central America and said he would not permit DEA agents to be based on Nicaraguan soil.

On Monday he said U.S. help with social programs in Nicaragua's impoverished Caribbean coastal region could make it harder for drug gangs to recruit agents there.

Much of the cocaine that moves through Central America is smuggled up the region's Caribbean coast by speedboat.

The U.S. Congress is debating an aid package worth $1.4 billion to provide Mexican drug agents with more surveillance and detection equipment. The United States also helps fund Guatemala's anti-drug trafficking operations. (Reporting by Ivan Castro, editing by Patricia Zengerle)

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