U.S. Training Role With Contras Held Possible : Suggestion of Honduras Program Raises New Alarm Among Reagan’s Congressional Critics

The White House on Friday raised the possibility that American military trainers might be allowed to work with Nicaraguan rebels in Honduras, causing new alarm among congressional critics of President Reagan’s $100-million aid request for the contras.

With a showdown vote in the House set for next Thursday, Reagan also intensified his rhetoric, declaring that he shares the contras’ belief in the need to resist communism and that that “makes me a contra, too.”

The suggestion that U.S. military advisers might become directly involved in the contras’ war against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government came from presidential spokesman Larry Speakes. Noting that the United States already has military trainers in Honduras accompanying the sizable contingent of several thousand American troops stationed there, Speakes said, “If there was any need to provide any training to the contras, the increase in the U.S. component in Honduras only would be very, very small.”

Capitol Hill Concern

Reagan’s aid package, which includes $70 million for covert military assistance, would lift current rules that ban direct Pentagon and CIA involvement with the contras’ training and combat activities, a prospect that has heightened concern on Capitol Hill about the Administration’s rationale for discussing military trainers in its drive to win support.

“The President has promised not just once but repeatedly that no U.S. soldiers would be committed to the contra war,” Rep. David E. Bonior (D-Mich.) said. The congressman, a Vietnam War veteran, warned that the White House revelation brings the contra campaign “one step closer to becoming another Vietnam.”

Even among Republicans, the idea of U.S. trainers working with the contras appeared to be unpopular.

Sen. Daniel J. Evans (R-Wash.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he fears that if a trainer were killed, the Administration would feel compelled to retaliate with U.S. troops. “The beginning of any war is the first casualty,” Evans said.

Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger raised the possibility of sending trainers to Honduras more than a week ago, saying that he would have “no problem” with the concept but that he did not think it would be necessary.

A senior Pentagon official, speaking on the condition that he not be identified, said the injection of the prospect of American trainers into the heated contra debate could unnecessarily polarize votes. “Something like this could be enough to tilt it away, and then we’re really in the soup,” he said.

Speaking to a group of handpicked supporters, Reagan identified himself openly with the contras. He noted that contra is short for the word counterrevolutionary in Spanish and that the contras are opposed to the Sandinistas, who seized power in a coup against the late dictator Anastasio Somoza.

“The way I see it, Somoza has been gone a long time,” Reagan said. “The revolution that toppled him then became a Communist coup, so the contras are against it. So I guess in a way they are counterrevolutionary, and God bless them for being that way.

“I guess that makes them contras, and that makes me a contra, too,” he declared.

At the same time, the President condemned the Sandinistas as “the new mob, part of the 20th Century’s answer to ‘Murder Incorporated.’ ” And he derided congressional attempts to alter his package to stress negotiations with the Sandinistas as “a little like a skunk negotiating itself into a rose--it doesn’t happen a lot.”

‘Inflames the Passions’

One White House adviser winced at the language Reagan used to identify himself with the contra cause. “That kind of talk so inflames the passions on both sides that it makes it difficult to work out rational positions for people in the middle whose votes he has to get if the bill’s going to pass,” he said.

But Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., Reagan’s chief political adviser, defended Reagan’s efforts to put the spotlight on the contras. Calling next week’s vote on the controversial aid package “the Panama Canal vote of the ‘80s,” he said, “the strategy is to make certain this is a vote that is remembered.”

From the start, White House strategists have believed that shock tactics were essential to the contra fight in order to capture public attention and give the largely Democratic opposition a political scare. “Two weeks ago we were being killed by inattention,” a senior official said. “You can’t win a debate when no one shows up.”

Republican Gospel

Although some believed that White House Communications Director Patrick J. Buchanan went too far in accusing Democrats who opposed Reagan of allying themselves with the Communists, the basic thesis that the Democrats will be blamed if the aid package fails and Nicaragua becomes “another Cuba” is still gospel for the Republicans in an election year.

A former Administration official who still advises the White House said that the President lacks the votes needed for a victory in the House and that it is doubtful that he will get them.

But Reagan has at least one more card to play before next week’s vote. On Sunday evening, he will address the nation over prime-time television, a forum that an official said he will use to “outline in stark terms the immediacy of the threat” that he believes the Sandinistas pose to U.S. national security.

White House strategists are nevertheless prepared for the likely eventuality that Reagan will come close in the House but will not win the necessary majority. He would then be forced to make a compromise deal with the Republican-controlled Senate to boost his chances for victory in a Senate vote the following week.

One informed official said the likely outcome will be a compromise that the Senate and House could approve, providing for some but not all of the military aid Reagan wants coupled with a 60- to 90-day period of negotiations before the aid is released.

One presidential assistant said that Reagan would be receptive to a compromise “at the margins” that would involve a written understanding about the timing of aid or negotiations with the Sandinistas but that would not alter the basic structure of his proposal. “But we don’t call that compromise,” he added. “That would be a victory.”

U.S. officials involved in planning the contra program have said the rebels desperately need training in communications, logistics and weapons maintenance.

Times staff writers Sara Fritz, James Gerstenzang and Doyle McManus contributed to this report.