Vote Gap on Contras Aid Narrowing

WASHINGTON — Only a week before the House votes on President Reagan’s $100-million aid package for the Nicaraguan rebels, both sides said Thursday that the gap between those favoring the measure and those opposing it is narrowing.

Patrick J. Buchanan, White House communications director and an architect of the President’s lobbying campaign, said in an interview that 10 days ago the Administration was down by 35 to 40 votes but that “now we have a long-shot chance, . . . a fighting chance” to win the full package for the rebels, called contras.

House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.), an outspoken foe of Reagan’s package, told reporters: “If the vote were tomorrow, we’d win it by 12 to 14. It’s close.”

The House has scheduled debate to begin next Wednesday, and the showdown vote is expected the next day.

Policy Failure Seen

Meanwhile, the Democratic-controlled House Intelligence Committee reported that U.S. intelligence analysts believe the Administration’s policy on Nicaragua probably will fail.

Even if Congress approves military aid for the contras, they cannot win a military victory and are unlikely to force the Marxist Sandinista government in Managua to negotiate on the terms the Administration seeks, the panel said in a report released Thursday.

The panel noted that the contras have been unable to win any clear military victories and have failed to develop an effective political support network within Nicaragua. “It continues to be the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community that only U.S. forces could truly resolve the conflict on a military basis,” the report said.

A dissenting report, prepared by the committee’s six Republicans and by one Democrat, Rep. Dan Daniel of Virginia, did not contest the intelligence findings but warned that if the contras collapse, American troops will eventually be sent to war against Nicaragua “to defend the United States and liberate Central America.”

Weapons Exhibited

To keep up the pressure for his controversial aid package, Reagan toured a State Department exhibit of weapons seized in Central America. He called it “proof of Sandinista crimes against their neighbors” and declared: “This nation, too, is threatened. . . . The stakes are too high to sit this one out.”

The exhibit, which will be taken to Capitol Hill next week, was set up to show how the Soviet Union and its allies, principally Cuba and Nicaragua, are funneling weapons to support Communist guerrilla movements throughout Central America. Most of the weapons are made in the United States and date back to the Vietnam era; they were captured by the North Vietnamese army after the fall of Saigon in April, 1975.

Reagan is expected to refer to the arms cache in his nationwide television address Sunday night, the culmination of his effort to convince Congress and the American people of the urgency of funding the contras.

Buchanan said the speech will be “like a lawyer’s summation before the jury” and that Reagan will make his case “with some eloquence and passion, as well as facts.”

Reagan is expected to make what is known in the White House as “the accountability argument,” in which he makes it clear that members of the House who oppose aid to the contras will be held “accountable by history” if Nicaragua falls permanently into the hands of the Communists.

Campaign Tactics

Because the House opponents of aid to the contras are overwhelmingly Democratic, White House strategists see the President’s approach as an especially effective tool in a congressional campaign year. “They don’t want to get caught if they know Reagan is going to be out there hard-balling against them,” one GOP adviser said of the Democrats.

In the scramble to sort out the facts from the emotional rhetoric before next week’s House vote, a bipartisan group of congressmen will leave today for a one-day fact-finding trip to Nicaragua and El Salvador. The trip was organized by House Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, an ardent supporter of Reagan’s aid package. The Administration is providing an Air Force plane for the congressmen.

House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) said he hopes that Central American envoy Philip C. Habib will make a report before the House vote--an indication of how fluid the situation is on Capitol Hill.

Michel said that with 55 Democrats supporting the President, “we’d have this baby locked up.” That would mean that about 20 Republicans have defected from the President’s position.

Times staff writer Bob Secter contributed to this story.