Contras May Get 55 U.S. Advisers : 1st Direct Military Role Projected in Reagan Plan

The Reagan Administration is preparing plans to send up to 55 military advisers to Central America to train the rebels fighting Nicaragua’s leftist government, officials said Friday.

The proposed training program, part of the Administration’s request for aid to the rebels that the House of Representatives is scheduled to consider April 15, would place U.S. military forces in their most direct, publicly acknowledged role of support for the rebels so far.

Democratic congressmen have criticized the plans as steps that increase the involvement of U.S. troops in the guerrilla war against Managua’s Sandinistas but say they do not believe the issue will block passage of some form of aid for the contras, as the rebels are called.

The Republican-controlled Senate on March 27 approved $100 million for military and other aid to the contras, including a training program. The Democratic-led House narrowly rejected the Administration’s initial request for such aid March 21, but several members said they would support a program that includes a 90-day delay in delivery of the assistance as a means of opening the door to negotiations with the Nicaraguan government.

“The Administration has stated on several occasions its view that military training would be a desirable part of any assistance provided to the resistance forces,” State Department spokesman Bernard Kalb said. “Training by the United States would help to counterbalance the training and support provided to the Sandinista armed forces by Cuban, Soviet and other East Bloc advisers.”

Other officials said that no final decision has been made about how many trainers would be involved, but one said that 55 had been adopted as “an arbitrary limit” because that is the self-imposed ceiling on the number of U.S. military advisers to the government in El Salvador.

Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams told a congressional subcommittee March 18 that he envisioned “three or four dozen” trainers in the program.

Most to Be in Honduras

Most of the training would probably take place in Honduras, where the largest contras army, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, has its bases, officials said.

They added that the trainers would be prohibited from accompanying contras units into combat or across the border into Nicaragua.

“In any such training, if it does materialize, there would be no U.S. personnel deployed anywhere near the Nicaraguan border or, obviously, in Nicaragua,” Kalb said.

A senior Honduran official told The Times recently that his country would be willing to host such a program, “if it can be kept secret.” Administration officials said they could accept that condition, although one added: “There is no such thing as a secret in Central America for long.”

Administration officials say that the contras will need U.S. training to operate the sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles that they are to be provided under the program and to use U.S.-supplied communications equipment. The rebels also need some help with more basic skills, such as map-reading and small-unit tactics.

Suited to Green Berets

The officials also said that no final decision has been made on which U.S. units would provide the training, although they said that the Army Special Forces--popularly known as Green Berets--would be a logical choice because training unconventional forces is part of their basic mission.

The training program could also include officers of the CIA as well as military personnel, one official said.

“There may be different units involved in different parts of it,” he said. “It may well include small units providing different kinds of training at different times and places.”

The United States already has more than 1,000 troops based in Honduras, a number that has swelled to upwards of 5,000 during the largest of a continuing series of joint military exercises with Honduran forces.

The provision of a training program would restore a U.S. military relationship with the contras that was broken off in 1984, after the CIA mined Nicaragua’s harbors.

CIA Directed Contras

From 1982 until 1984, the CIA funded, supplied, trained and directed the contras’ military effort, secretly put U.S. pilots into combat against Nicaraguan units and launched speedboat raids against Nicaragua’s harbors.

During the same period, U.S. military units built airstrips in Honduras for the contras’ use, delivered supplies covertly and provided intelligence to the contras, knowledgeable sources have said.

During the House debate over the aid request last month, several Democrats raised the question of the trainers among a catalogue of objections to the Administration’s proposal.

Rep. David E. Bonior (D-Mich.) charged on March 14 that sending advisers would bring the contras program “one step closer to becoming another Vietnam.”

But the training program was not a central issue in the debate, which revolved instead around the basic question of whether the Administration had made a good-faith effort to negotiate a solution to its conflict with the Sandinistas.