Senate Rejects Move to Block Contras’ Package

The Senate on Tuesday rejected a last-ditch effort by Democrats to derail President Reagan’s requested $100 million in aid to the Nicaraguan rebels, and Republican leaders predicted that the aid will become law later this week.

By a vote of 54 to 46, the Senate set aside an effort by Sen. Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.) to delete the President’s aid request from a House-passed bill that also provides $8.2 billion for U.S. military construction. Eleven Democrats and 43 Republicans voted with the President in what was viewed as a key test on the issue.

Indeed, Reagan won one more vote Tuesday than he did last March 27, when the Senate by a 53-47 margin approved aid for the Nicaraguan rebels, known as contras. The extra vote came from Sen. Daniel J. Evans (R-Wash.).

But Tuesday’s vote was only a prelude to a showdown today, when the Senate will decide whether to limit debate on both the contras’ aid and separate legislation to impose economic sanctions against South Africa. If debate is limited on both--a step that requires the support of at least 60 senators--the Senate then is expected to approve both measures before it adjourns for a summer recess.

Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) predicted that the Senate would favor the contras’ aid package once again, as it has several times previously on narrow, bipartisan votes. “We now have a Senate which is willing to act decisively, and we still have that strong bipartisan support,” he declared.

Reagan, at his Chicago press conference, called on the Senate to approve the aid. The choice, he said, is one between supporting “democracy in Central America and the security of our own borders” and allowing the Soviets “to make permanent their military beachhead on the mainland of North America.”

‘Dilly-Dallied, Delayed’

In the Senate, Dole charged that opponents of aid to the contras have “stonewalled, dilly-dallied and delayed” long enough. His words reflected the urgency felt by Administration officials, who have been making plans to proceed with the assistance ever since the Democratic-controlled House last month approved military aid for the first time in nearly three years.

Liberal Democrats compared Tuesday’s action to the vote 22 years ago on the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that marked the beginning of the escalation of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

“The syndrome of the quagmire, slowly but surely sucking us deeper into an endless military conflict that we cannot escape, applies to Nicaragua as much as it did to Vietnam,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said.

Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) argued that if the aid is approved, the U.S. government will be deeply involved in the contras’ war against Nicaragua--”a war that will be run each day out of the suburban Virginia offices of the CIA and the Pentagon.” Under the proposal now pending before the Senate, the assistance would be administered covertly by the CIA, a course of action currently prohibited by law.

Approval of the aid “is the functional equivalent of a declaration of war--the moral equivalent of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution,” Cranston declared.

But Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) dismissed the often-used Vietnam analogy as “nonsense--a way to drag up emotions and history in a false way.” He added, “Our policy is not to go to war.”

Despite that argument, the Senate late Tuesday rejected by a 51-47 margin an amendment that would have expressly forbidden the CIA from dipping into its secret reserve or contingency funds to bankroll more than the $100 million in aid that Reagan has requested.

The Senate also rejected an amendment by Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) that would have barred the dissemination of any money to finance operations that threaten lives of civilians.