U.S. Troop Use Predicted if Aid to Contras Lags

Unless the United States moves promptly to support Nicaraguan rebel forces, American troops ultimately will have to be sent to Central America to seal off Nicaragua’s borders to prevent the leftist government from subverting its neighbors, a senior Pentagon official predicted Thursday.

In a hard-line speech prepared for the Inland Empire of Southern California World Affairs Council in San Bernardino, Under Secretary of Defense Fred C. Ikle urged Congress to approve U.S. military assistance to the insurgents, known as contras, because the existing program of non-lethal “humanitarian” aid is not enough.

“I fear that if the United States continues to opt for inadequate aid to the Nicaraguan freedom fighters, it would in effect be inviting (Soviet leader Mikhail S.) Gorbachev to build a second Cuba in Central America,” Ikle said. “How are boots and food supplies going to counter Soviet tanks and helicopter gunships?”

‘Democratic Resistance’

He added: “If our legislators did continue to tilt the odds in Nicaragua in favor of the Communists, the democratic resistance would be eliminated in a few years. Nicaragua would then be turned into an arsenal for Communist insurgencies, tightly controlled by a totalitarian Leninist regime.”

If the contras are eliminated from Nicaragua, he predicted, Central America “would be partitioned like Korea” into Communist and non-Communist areas “requiring large U.S. forces deployed along difficult borders.”

“The Cubans and Soviets would strengthen their position in Nicaragua and stir up terrorist attacks to cause continuing casualties among these forward-deployed U.S. forces,” he said.

Ikle, one of the Administration’s most outspoken advocates of increased aid to the contras, said that U.S. restraint is never matched by Soviet restraint because “Leninism demands pushing forward with the bayonet until it hits steel.”

“Either we openly choose appeasement of the Communists in Nicaragua . . . or we choose to support the side of freedom and democracy at a level sufficient so that it can prevail,” he said.