Nicaragua Again Warning Citizens on ‘U.S. Invasion’

President Daniel Ortega says the United States is about to turn Nicaragua into another Vietnam, and his followers issued warnings today against a “U.S. invasion.”

In a meeting with reporters late Thursday night, Ortega would not comment directly on the rejection by the House of President Reagan’s request for $100 million in aid to Nicaraguan rebels. But he called congressional debate on the issue “illegal and immoral” and said “a vote against (the aid) does not signify the war has ended.

“We are threatened. Reagan has spoken of using military advisers (to the rebels). This is the beginning of the Vietnamization of the conflict.”

Alert Against Invasion

Barricada, the Sandinista newspaper, urged the people today to maintain an armed alert against invasion.

The government has said repeatedly that it expects a U.S. or U.S.-supported invasion in support of the rebels, or contras. The 4-year-old guerrilla war has cost thousands of lives and contributed to the deterioration of Nicaragua’s economy.

A banner headline in Barricada said, “Aggression and Serious Threat Continue.” Inside, stories called for a “popular mobilization to defeat aggression” and said, “The people should prepare themselves to resist.”

“Without a doubt . . . the blackmail and the obsession for U.S. military involvement will continue, with arms and advisers, in order to save the mercenaries from their definite defeat,” the newspaper said in a front-page editorial.

Different Viewpoints

President Reagan calls the contras “freedom fighters.” The Sandinistas call them CIA mercenaries.

Central American concern about the confrontation in Nicaragua was reflected in an editorial on the House vote by the centrist Guatemalan paper El Grafico. It echoed Ortega’s remarks in the headline, “Toward the Vietnamization of Central America.”

Mentioning the Nicaraguan reaction and stationing of more Honduran troops at the border, the newspaper said: “The black threatening clouds and winds of war do not presage anything good.

“What is blowing in the isthmus is one more step in the confrontation between East and West, a power conflict in which we do not have even one candle at the funeral, but which may well place us in the tomb--good reason that we should not let ourselves be dragged into a conflict that is foreign to us.”