U.S. Exaggerated Border Fighting, Ortega Charges

The president of Nicaragua said Sunday that the Reagan Administration blew “all out of proportion” last week’s fighting on the Honduran-Nicaraguan border and that Washington’s move was timed to coincide with the Senate vote on $100 million in aid for the anti-Sandinista rebels called contras.

Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista leader, held out no hope in a televised interview that an element in the Senate-passed measure intended to encourage the contras and the Nicaraguan government to negotiate a settlement of their conflict would be fruitful.

The Administration asserted that as many as 1,500 Sandinista troops, making up two battalions, crossed the Nicaraguan border into Honduras, clashing with the contras, whose camps are tucked away in relatively inaccessible areas along the border. Others have estimated that 700 or 800 Nicaraguan troops took part in the fighting--and that such incursions have been made repeatedly in recent years.

U.S. forces based in Honduras were called upon last week to use Huey and Chinook helicopters to fly Honduran troops, weapons and supplies into the region after the confrontations began, and President Reagan provided $20 million in weapons, ammunition, and other military aid for Honduras.

Appearing from Managua on the CBS News program “Face the Nation,” Ortega said that such clashes have taken place “for years now all along the frontier area. . . . They are totally defensive operations.”

Elliott Abrams, the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, responded moments later on the same program that the Sandinistas are seeking a military victory against the contras, who are trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, and “that’s why they went into Honduras.”

While denying that Sandinista troops had invaded Honduras, Ortega as much as acknowledged that they had entered the territory of their northern neighbor, saying “the mercenary (contras) forces are in Honduran territory.”

Honduras, reluctant to acknowledge that its territory is being used by the contras or that it was unable to keep Nicaraguan troops from crossing the border, was slow to concede that the clashes took place.

After the Administration lost a vote in the House of Representatives on its package of assistance for the contras--$70 million in direct military aid and $30 million in so-called “humanitarian aid,” which would include some defensive weapons--it began focusing attention on the skirmishes in Honduras, which Ortega said began before the House vote took place.

The Nicaraguan Defense Ministry has said that 350 contras and 40 Sandinista troops were killed in combat in the area over the last two weeks.

“The Reagan Administration found it opportune, necessary and convenient to blow this all out of proportion,” Ortega said. “He (Reagan) needed to do so. And the lie came from the Reagan Administration when it said that Nicaragua was invading Honduras. And this, of course, is with an eye to the Senate vote and to U.S. public opinion.”