U.S. Troop Use in Nicaragua Hinted : Shultz Warns Aid Foes That if Rebels Fail, Americans May Have to Fight

In a blunt warning to congressional critics of U.S. policy in Central America, Secretary of State George P. Shultz suggested Friday that if the United States does not renew its aid to Nicaraguan rebels, it may ultimately have to use its own troops to overthrow the leftist government in Managua.

“If we do not take the appropriate steps now to pressure the Sandinistas to live up to their past promises, then we may find later, when we can no longer avoid acting, that the stakes will be higher and the costs greater,” Shultz said in a major address to the Commonwealth Club here.

A senior State Department official confirmed that Shultz’s somewhat veiled reference was to the possibility that U.S. troops might have to be used if the anti-Sandinista rebels, known as contras, fail to force the Managua government to change its course. The Reagan Administration accuses the Sandinistas of supplying weapons to leftist rebels in El Salvador and of repressive rule in Nicaragua.

Campaigning for Aid

The speech was a further escalation of the Administration’s almost daily round of attacks on the Nicaraguan government in an effort to obtain congressional approval for renewed assistance to the contras.

President Reagan, meanwhile, in a talk to newspaper editorial writers at the White House, made clear Friday that the use of U.S. forces would be a last resort, primarily because of Latin American opposition to direct U.S. intervention.

“Our own friends and allies south of the border and the OAS (Organization of American States), would not tolerate our going in with armed force in Latin America,” he said. But he added,”You can’t really say never” because a Nicaraguan invasion of a neighbor, or other presently unforeseen circumstances, might make such action necessary.

Shultz said the United States is determined to bring about a change in policy in Managua and does not care much whether this is accomplished peacefully or by force of the contras’ arms.

“Whether it (a reversal of course by the government) is achieved through the multilateral Contadora negotiations, through unilateral actions by the Sandinistas alone or in concert with their domestic opponents, or through the collapse of the Sandinista regime, is immaterial to us,” he said. “But without such a change of behavior, lasting peace in Central America will be impossible.”

He left little doubt that he does not expect the Nicaraguan government to change voluntarily.

‘They Will Not Modify’

“The Sandinistas are committed Marxist-Leninists,” he said. “It would be foolish of us and insulting to them to imagine that they do not believe in their proclaimed goals,” he said. “They will not modify or bargain away their position unless there is compelling incentive for them to do so. The only incentive that has proved effective thus far comes from the vigorous armed opposition” of the contras.

Congress last year cut off U.S. aid to the contras but agreed to set aside $14 million to be available in March if both the Senate and House vote to release the funding.

Many opponents of the program have said that by providing military aid to anti-government rebels, the United States is in danger of being sucked into a Vietnam-style war in Central America. Shultz rejected that argument, maintaining that assistance to the contras is the best way to avoid having to send American combat troops to the region.

“Those who would cut off these freedom fighters from the rest of the democratic world are, in effect, consigning Nicaragua to the endless darkness of Communist tyranny,” he said. “And they are leading the United States down a path of greater danger.”

The Shultz speech was a detailed rationale of the Nicaragua policy declared by Reagan at a news conference Thursday--that the United States supports removal of the Managua regime unless it joins with its rebel opponents and domestic critics to form a democratic government.

But Shultz went further, saying the United States has the right to support anti-Communist rebels anywhere in the world in a mirror image of what he said was Soviet policy of backing the Communist opponents of non-Communist regimes.

“So long as Communist dictatorships feel free to aid and abet insurgencies in the name of “socialist internationalism,” why must the democracies . . . be inhibited from defending their own interests and the cause of democracy itself?” he asked.

Rough Going in Congress

Several ranking Democrats in Congress said Friday that the Administration’s concentrated effort to build support for aid to the contras has had no significant effect so far and asserted that the Democratic-controlled House remains solidly opposed to renewed aid.

“I share the President’s dismay” at some actions of the Sandinista government, House Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-Tex.) said. “But I don’t think we have any call to appoint ourselves as God’s avenging angels and reform by force any government with whom we disagree.”

“Covert aid is not going to pass the Congress,” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters.

Susan Benda, a lobbyist for a coalition of private groups that oppose aid to the rebels, said she estimates that the Republican-led Senate is divided 53 to 47 in favor of the Administration but that there is a 50-vote margin against the contras in the House.

Although the main focus of Shultz’s speech was on Nicaragua, he broadened it into a global statement of U.S. policy toward groups opposing dictatorial governments. He did not spare right-wing anti-Communist regimes, pledging support for “advocates of peaceful democratic change in South Africa, Chile, the Republic of (South) Korea and the Philippines” along with opponents of the leftist governments in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Ethiopia and Angola and dissidents in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Oblique Swipe at Carter

But, in an oblique swipe at the human rights policy of former President Jimmy Carter, Shultz said, “We must heed the cautionary lessons of both Iran and Nicaragua, in which pressures against right-wing authoritarian regimes were not well thought out and helped lead to even more repressive dictatorships.”

In his news conference Thursday night, Reagan said he hoped to oust the Sandinistas and replace them with a democratic regime, but said the United States would not insist on overthrowing them “if they say uncle.” The President asserted that the leaders of the rebels were themselves revolutionaries who had fought against the rightist dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, and said U.S. support for their cause is consistent with the charters of the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

Nicaragua’s embassy in Washington issued a statement objecting to Reagan’s assertion that the contras were part of the 1979 revolution against Somoza and pointing out that several high-ranking rebel officers were members of Somoza’s National Guard.

Times reporter Doyle McManus in Washington contributed to this story.