Honduran Calls Nation Unprepared for ‘Inevitable’ War With Nicaragua

The president of the Honduran Congress said Friday that his country is unprepared to defend itself in an “inevitable” war with neighboring Nicaragua.

In the strongest statements to date by a senior Honduran official about relations with Marxist-led Nicaragua, Carlos Montoya of the governing Liberal Party complained that his country “is more compromised every day in this conflict.”

“War will not be started by our forces, but I think it is inevitable,” he said in a taped speech made available to United Press International. “We should be prepared. In Honduras, there will be terrorism and aggression, and we are not mentally prepared. We can dress it up and lie to the people, but this conflict is more serious every day.”

The tape was of an address that the 40-year-old politician made to sympathizers backing his presidential bid in elections planned for late 1987.

President Jose Azcona has repeatedly said that there will be no war with Nicaragua and the Foreign Ministry has said that Honduras is not looking for a fight with the Sandinistas.

On Dec. 8, Honduran planes hit Nicaraguan positions after the government here charged that Sandinista troops crossed into Honduras, apparently in pursuit of U.S.-backed contras working out of Honduran base camps.

In Managua, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega proposed that contras in Honduras be returned under an amnesty program or be sent to other countries, the official newspaper Barricada reported Friday.

The paper said that the plan presented to the Honduran president also provided for the repatriation of Nicaraguan refugees living in Honduras.

Amnesty for the contras has been offered by Nicaragua for the last three years, and there was little reason to expect that Azcona would agree to it now.