$100 Million a Year in Aid Sought by Contras

Nicaraguan rebel leader Adolfo Calero, launching a new lobbying campaign for U.S. military funding, said Tuesday that his troops need $100 million a year in aid--almost four times the current amount--to win their war against the leftist Sandinista regime.

Calero, whose Nicaraguan Democratic Force is the largest guerrilla army fighting the Sandinistas, acknowledged that he is unlikely to get that much but warned that the result will be “a protracted war.”

“We can do the job in Nicaragua, but the amount of money we get regulates the amount of time it takes,” he said in an interview. “If we don’t get what we need, we will be fighting a protracted war, which is what I’ve always been afraid of.”

The rebels, known in Spanish as contras, were given $27 million in U.S. aid last year for non-lethal uses after a bruising battle in Congress. The issue is expected to come up for debate again before the existing funds run out March 31.

Hope for Increase

Reagan Administration officials have said that they hope to persuade Congress to increase the contras’ funding and lift the prohibition on combat-related purchases. An official said Tuesday that the Administration is still taking soundings to determine how much of that program Congress might accept, but added that “$100 million sounds a little unrealistic.”

Calero acknowledged that his troops, whose strength he estimated at 18,000, have suffered some reverses in the field against the much larger Sandinista army, which began using Soviet-supplied helicopters in counterinsurgency operations last year.

U.S. officials say that the contras’ military operations have been hampered by Honduras’ refusal to allow supply shipments to pass through their airports to the rebels’ camps, most of which are along the Nicaraguan-Honduran border.

“I admit that the appearance of the Hind-D helicopter put us in a very difficult situation,” Calero said. “We have had to get away from the Pacific side (of Nicaragua) and look for forested areas on the Atlantic side,” which is sparsely populated.

Victory Is No Defeat

But he said the contras are “maintaining a level of military activity” and quoted from a letter of George Washington during the Revolutionary War: “Our major victory consists in not being annihilated.”

Nonetheless, he said, he is confident that in the long run, “we are going to win. . . . The Sandinistas have lost the support of the Nicaraguan people. They have no place to go, except Cuba.”

He said that a wealthy sympathizer recently had donated $1 million to the contras to buy more anti-aircraft missiles, which he called their most acute military need. In a broadcast from the contras’ clandestine radio station in Honduras on Monday, Calero was quoted as calling the donor “a rich American lady,” but he refused to confirm that description Tuesday.

“A year ago, we said that with $50 million we could do the job, to bring the Sandinistas to their day of reckoning,” Calero said. “But the ante has gone up. A year ago, the Sandinistas didn’t have helicopters, didn’t have as much armament, hadn’t opened as many roads to the north where our troops used to be safe.

“Now the amount we need . . . is possibly double the amount it was a year ago,” he said.

Lugar Skeptical

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, predicted last week that the contras would have a difficult time winning increased aid and said Congress still wants to know “what sort of horse we are riding on.”

“I’d like to know what their program is,” Lugar said.

Calero replied Tuesday: “For Nicaragua, we propose democracy, and that is Western-type democracy in keeping with Western values: religion, freedom, family and private property. The Sandinistas must either mend their ways or go.”