Reagan to Seek Funds to Double Contra Force : Emboldened by New Congressional Support, He Wants to Make Rebels Real Threat to Sandinistas

Emboldened by congressional approval of $27 million in aid for Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista rebels, the Reagan Administration has decided to seek still more funds next year in a bid to double the size of the rebel army and build it into a fighting force capable of genuinely threatening Managua’s leftist regime.

Administration officials, after months of bruising but ultimately successful battles with a reluctant Congress, say they are convinced that public opinion has shifted solidly against the Sandinistas.

They speak increasingly of the rebel effort, originally a modest proxy war run covertly by the CIA, as the center of U.S. policy in Central America--with the overt goal of toppling the Sandinistas.

Basic Problem

“We consider the problem in Central America basically to be Nicaragua, as supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union,” Secretary of State George P. Shultz declared during a recent visit to Mexico. “The people of Nicaragua . . . don’t accept that, and they want to fight for the freedom and independence of their country. I think that’s a cause worthy of support.”

“If the Sandinistas go on antagonizing the people of Nicaragua long enough, the people of Nicaragua are going to throw them out,” Elliott Abrams, the newly installed assistant secretary of state for Latin America, said in an interview. “That’s the direction they seem to be moving. It’s very unfortunate, but that’s their choice.”

Other officials, speaking on condition that they not be identified, are even blunter. One said: “The Sandinistas want communism in Nicaragua and Central America, and we cannot accept that. They must be removed.”

These officials said they expect to seek “substantially” more aid next year for the contras , as the rebels are called, without the limitation of this year’s congressional prohibition against purchasing weapons and ammunition. The aim, they said, is to expand the rebel force to 35,000 men or more from its present strength, which is estimated to be about 18,000.

Escalation Expected

As their force roughly doubles, the contras would be expected to escalate their attacks on the Sandinista regime.

Adolfo Calero, leader of the largest contra group, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, said the $27 million approved by Congress this week would enable his men “to go beyond the stop-and-go performance we’ve had ever since we started . . . to put on a serious, continuous effort against the Sandinistas.”

He noted that, on Thursday, his troops briefly cut Nicaragua’s main highway some 60 miles north of Managua in one of their most successful raids in months.

His force has so far fought mostly a hit-and-run sort of war in the rugged mountains along Nicaragua’s northern border with Honduras, but “we’re going to the cities,” Calero promised, and added:

“We’re going to the Pacific seaboard (where the country’s population is concentrated). . . . It will take a little time--a few months, I would say. But if we’re not held back as before, we can do some serious damage.”

U.S. officials are more cautious, forecasting only that the contras will be able to increase pressure on the Sandinistas as their ranks increase. About 500 new recruits are joining the rebel force each month, they estimate.

They have good reason to hedge their bets. The contras’ war against the Sandinistas, which began in the aftermath of Nicaragua’s 1979 revolution as members of the old regime’s National Guard fled north, has had its ups and downs. The CIA spent more than $80 million to arm and organize the contras from 1981 to 1984, but the force never achieved any major victories over the growing Sandinista army--even when CIA gunboats and helicopters entered the fray.

Shift in Sentiment

That officially secret war came to a sputtering halt in April, 1984, when Congress objected to the CIA’s mining of Nicaraguan harbors and cut off support for the contras. But sentiment shifted over the following months, as the Sandinistas appeared to move closer to the Soviet Union and several Nicaraguan opposition figures threw their support to the contras, and the Democratic-led House voted in June to approve the assistance it had earlier denied.

Abrams said he believes Congress’ change of heart will last, although he added, “How much money we get will depend partly on . . . how the Sandinistas behave.”

Others are less sure. A former Administration official who helped plan the original covert program said: “We’re just not organized in this country to support a civil war for the time it’s going to require. Guerrilla war is an ugly business. There will inevitably be a spate of scandals over the contras’ behavior. How will Congress react to that?”

Nevertheless, U.S. officials are more willing than before to talk about military force as the probable road to change in Nicaragua--not a U.S. invasion, they hasten to add, but a successful insurrection led by the contras and supported by the United States.

‘Neoconservative’ Influence

After years of internal debate, the Administration also appears more united around its policy--a change some officials ascribe to the arrival of Abrams, a leading “neoconservative” who earlier worked for two Democratic senators, the late Henry M. Jackson of Washington and Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York.

“The Sandinistas have to be forced to change,” Abrams said. “Nothing less than that is going to do it. And even that may not do it.

“We have laid down a few markers that I think are very clear about U.S. military action. I think it’s clear to the Sandinistas that they risk such action with something like an invasion of a neighboring country, becoming a base for military equipment that could attack the United States, that kind of thing. . . . We have warned them about terrorist attacks on Americans, though we have not stated what our reaction would be; we have said we would react accordingly.

“But I think the real action-forcing device in the end is the combination of the contras and the growing internal opposition.”

Skeptical of Settlement

Officially, the United States still expresses hope for a negotiated settlement with the Sandinistas, but Administration leaders are increasingly open in their skepticism about the chances for such an outcome. The Sandinistas, they charge, have consistently rejected compromise with their opponents.

“It’s conceivable,” Abrams said, “that as the pressure grows, ultimately--with lots of fights among the comandantes-- they could move toward compromise. That’s not the way they look to be moving right now. . . . The other direction would be greater internal repression, more warfare against the contras and more pressure on Honduras and Costa Rica. That’s the direction they seem to be moving.

“Given that they are, in the view of this Administration--including my view--communists, one would not expect them to change, to compromise in any way until they felt that it was either that, or the regime as presently constituted would not survive. They haven’t reached that point yet, and maybe they’ll never reach it. Communists are not very good at that.”

Nicaraguan officials blame the Reagan Administration for the impasse, charging that its unspoken aim has always been to topple them, that the growing contra army is merely a creation of the CIA, and that Washington’s proposals for compromise were aimed at maneuvering the contras and their allies into power.

Blasts Americans

“Who divides the Nicaraguan family? The U.S. leaders,” Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega said in an emotional speech this week at the funeral of eight women killed when contras ambushed the military convoy they were riding in. “Their behavior is worse than Hitler’s. Americans are fascists, criminals and murderers. They are literally provoking our extermination.”

The Administration has toughened its conditions for a negotiated settlement with the Sandinistas. In April, when he was seeking money from Congress for the contras, President Reagan offered to reopen the talks that Washington had broken off with the Sandinistas after nine sessions. But last month, Shultz and White House spokesman Larry Speakes rejected the possibility of any new talks unless the Sandinistas agree to negotiate with the contras, something they have long refused to do.

Over the longer run, the Administration has made negotiations difficult by putting Nicaragua’s domestic political system at the center of its concerns and demanding a democratic system in which the contras, who include some figures from the rightist dictatorship the Sandinistas overthrew, could share in power.

Wary of Promises

Once, U.S. officials acknowledge, they were willing to negotiate with the Sandinistas solely over the issues of their alliances with the Soviet Union and Cuba and their support of leftist guerrillas in neighboring countries. But now they say they are convinced that unless Nicaragua’s domestic system is changed, any promises it makes about its external behavior will be worthless.

And in any case, they add, the contras are a legitimate political force that deserves a place in the political system.

Some Administration officials, mainly in the State Department, are still working to keep the possibility of a negotiated settlement alive--primarily through the talks undertaken by the so-called Contadora Group made up of Mexico, Panama, Colombia and Venezuela, in which the United States does not play a direct role.

“The beauty of Contadora is that it could be the means for the Sandinistas to say uncle without having to say it directly to us,” one U.S. official said.

But for the moment, he acknowledged, Contadora offers little hope. Both the Sandinistas and the contras are gearing up for a military test, not negotiations.

“We’ve got to move toward creating an opportunity for movement,” the would-be negotiator said bleakly. “But we don’t know what that would be.”