U.S. Warns Nicaragua on Regional Terrorism : Reports Evidence of Plans to Attack Americans in Honduras; Charges Rejected by Sandinistas

The Reagan Administration, saying it has evidence of plans for “a program of terrorist attacks” against U.S. citizens in Honduras, warned Thursday that it would hold Nicaragua’s leftist government directly responsible if such attacks were carried out.

In a bluntly worded diplomatic note released by the State Department, the Administration charged that the Nicaraguans are supporting groups planning the attacks and “may be directly involved.”

It warned that “any Nicaraguan-supported terrorist attacks against U.S. personnel in Honduras would be viewed as the direct responsibility of the government of Nicaragua and that the United States should be expected to react accordingly.”

Anywhere in Region

While the note specifically mentioned Honduras, it also put the Sandinistas on notice that they would be held responsible for attacks on U.S. citizens anywhere in the region and implied that Nicaragua played a part in last month’s machine-gun killings of 13 people, including six Americans, at outdoor cafes in San Salvador.

“A repetition anywhere in Central America of the June 19 murders of U.S. citizens in El Salvador will have serious consequences for the perpetrators and for those who assist them,” the message said.

It said the Managua government “should use its influence to discourage attacks against U.S. personnel--personnel who are not, as they know, involved in combat.”

A guerrilla group called the Central American Revolutionary Workers Party, known by the Spanish initials PRTC, later took responsibility for the cafe killings, saying its actions were aimed at four U.S. Marines who were among the 13 victims. The U.S. diplomatic note said that the Administration is “well aware of Nicaraguan government support for and influence with the PRTC.”

The note, delivered in Managua on Wednesday night by U.S. Ambassador Harry E. Bergold as the Sandinistas prepared to celebrate their sixth anniversary in power, was denounced Thursday by a Nicaraguan spokesman in Washington as “a modern-day version of gunboat diplomacy.”

In Managua, the Sandinista government accused the Reagan Administration of trying to “orchestrate the necessary pretext” for U.S. military aggression against Nicaragua.

A statement, signed by Victor Hugo Tinoco, Nicaragua’s acting foreign minister, was delivered to both the U.S. Embassy in Managua and the State Department in Washington.

“Nicaragua categorically rejects” the U.S. charges against it, Tinoco said. He added that the U.S. note “contains false accusations, intolerable threats and a violation of the law and usage in relations between states. . . . The Nicaraguan government is not involved nor has it ever been involved in any type of actions contrary to the norms and principles of international law.

“The absurd American intention to hold Nicaragua responsible for eventual acts of violence and terror . . . can only be understood in the context of the U.S. decision to orchestrate the necessary pretext . . . that would generate the conditions for a direct military aggression against the Nicaraguan people,” the Nicaraguan statement said.

Denies Salvador Role

Nicaragua also denied that it had any responsibility for the slaying of the six Americans in San Salvador “or in any other similar situation that may occur in that or another country.”

Myriam Hooker, press secretary at the Nicaraguan Embassy, said President Daniel Ortega also will reply today “in a most forceful and categoric way” at a mass rally in Managua at which a crowd of 400,000 is expected.

The State Department released a text of its message after the Nicaraguan Embassy here provided copies to reporters. A department statement expressed annoyance that the Nicaraguans “have chosen to breach the privacy of our diplomatic exchanges.”

The warning was the latest Administration broadside aimed at the Sandinista regime, which President Reagan has branded as one of five “outlaw states” engaged in “outright acts of war” against the United States.

Reagan’s national security adviser, Robert C. McFarlane, charged Thursday that the Sandinistas are a threat to peace in Central America and said the United States will continue to support anti-Sandinista contras until Nicaragua establishes a Western-style democracy.

“In Nicaragua we have a government which is posing a fundamental problem to the overall peaceful development of the area,” McFarlane said in a speech.

He said the contras have been gaining 200 to 250 new recruits a week and now total almost 20,000 men--up from an estimated 15,000 three months ago. “I think this is a decisive year,” he said.

“There is the possibility that . . . the home-grown strength of the opposition and the persistent bloody-mindedness of the government combine to give us a real chance there,” he said.

McFarlane said that change in Nicaragua would come through increasing military and political victories by the contras, not through a U.S. invasion. “We are not going to invade,” he said. “The President has made that emphatically clear.”

Exercises in Honduras

In contrast to El Salvador, where there is a small contingent of Marines guarding the U.S. Embassy and only 55 U.S. military advisers, 1,200 U.S. servicemen are stationed in Honduras. An estimated 1,800 more are expected to be present for exercises scheduled to begin within a few weeks.

Arthur Scott, a U.S. spokesman in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, declined to comment Thursday about any indications of planned terrorist attacks.

The Nicaraguan statement was signed by Tinoco because Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto has been on a fast for 11 days to protest what he calls “state terrorism” by the United States against Nicaragua.

In a press conference Thursday, D’Escoto said he “wouldn’t put it past” the CIA to “kill some American so that the United States government will have the pretext that they have been trying to find to launch a direct invasion.”

U.S. ‘Outlaw Government’

He said the Reagan Administration has “become an outlaw government, a government that is a fugitive of justice.”

Nicaragua condemns all forms of terrorism, the Foreign Ministry note said, “particularly state terrorism, such as that encouraged and financed by the U.S. Administration against our country.”

It said the U.S.-supported contras have killed, wounded or abducted 12,146 people in their war against the Sandinistas, and “more than 7,500 children have been left orphans.”

Don Shannon reported on this story from Washington and William R. Long from Managua.