Ortega Admits Sandinista Units Crossed Border Into Honduras

President Daniel Ortega admitted Wednesday night that his government sent troops into Honduras to pursue U.S.-backed Nicaraguan rebels and warned that it will do so again.

In a nationally broadcast speech, Ortega contended that Honduras, in effect, had surrendered part of the mountainous terrain inside its southern border to the contras, under pressure from the Reagan Administration.

“As long as the contras’ camps continue in Honduras, they will be an extension of our border, because we are not going to give up our right, our obligation to defend our sovereignty,” he said.

Ortega’s address followed a series of clashes between Nicaragua and Honduran soldiers that prompted a U.S.-aided airlift of fresh Honduran forces to the border last Sunday.

It was the most explicit admission by Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista leadership of one of its central policies in the five-year war against the contras.

Foreign military specialists in the region said that up to 1,000 Sandinista soldiers have been in the eastern part of Honduras’ Las Vegas salient, a rugged triangular-shaped area that juts into northern Nicaragua, since last July. Their aim is to bottle up an estimated 12,000 contras in Honduran base camps and prevent infiltration of Nicaraguan territory.

One specialist, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that an additional 700 to 1,000 Sandinista soldiers entered the western part of the salient last week, overrunning four Honduran army outposts. He said those forces withdrew as U.S. helicopters ferried in three companies of Honduran army reinforcements but that several hundred Sandinista troops were apparently still operating unmolested inside Honduras.

Ortega gave no details of the incursion. But he said that Honduran President Jose Azcona Hoyo had telephoned him Saturday to urge the withdrawal of Nicaraguan troops.

“We told him then what we repeat today,” Ortega said. “We have not invaded Honduras. We have no problem with Honduras. But Honduras has created the problem by yielding to pressure by the United States to hand territory over to mercenary camps.

“We are fighting against those mercenary forces that are present in Honduran territory,” he added.

The Nicaraguan leader spoke at a ceremony commemorating the 38th anniversary of the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He told a convention center audience that the Reagan Administration “has systematically violated the rights of Nicaraguans” by funding the contras.

Ortega said Honduran A-37 fighter planes bombed a village and a military base inside Nicaragua on Sunday but blamed the United States for directing the attack, in which seven Sandinista soldiers were killed and two children were wounded.

“The United States is trying to provoke a war between Honduras and Nicaragua” he declared. “It is looking for any pretext for intervention by North American troops.”