Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega charged Saturday that the opposition was "openly conspiring" with US help to overthrow his government, and threatened to unleash "weapons of war" if they did not stop.

Thousands of Nicaraguans marched against Ortega last month after the Electoral Tribunal disqualified two political parties from the November municipal and the 2011 general elections.

"We want peace, but we're also prepared to raise the steel weapons of war if they try to overthrow the people's government, the power of ordinary citizens," Ortega said on the 29th anniversary of the rebel uprising that overthrew the Anastasio Somoza dictatorship.

The leftist former Sandinista strongman who led the 1979 coup and was elected president in 2006, called opposition members "traitors" in the pay of the US Embassy in Managua.

"Those who are openly conspiring and are financed by the yanks, by the imperialists, they'd better respect the rule of law here, they'd better not provoke the people, the poor, the farmers, because this is the people's proud Sandinista power."

He threatened to launch "an uprising of the people, of the masses, of the poor."

Ortega, 62, said the ruling Sandinista Party and his government, "under the motto: a free land or death," were busy trying to deliver progress that, in his view, prior governments denied people in this impoverished Central American nation.