U.S. Copters Fly Guatemala Combat Troops

In the first direct U.S. involvement in Guatemala’s long-running war against leftist insurgents, three U.S. Army helicopters with American crews airlifted about 300 Guatemalan troops to a remote part of the Central American nation, the Pentagon and State Department announced Tuesday.

Reagan Administration spokesmen said that the operation, requested last week by Guatemalan President Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo, was carried out Sunday and Monday by CH-47 Chinook helicopters. They ferried the Guatemalan troops to the regional military headquarters for the Playa Grande area, about 120 miles north of Guatemala City.

Col. Marvin Braman, a Pentagon spokesman, said that the three helicopters, with four-man crews each, “took off and landed in secure areas” that were not within range of hostile fire.

He said Cerezo requested the mission as a “one-time thing.” The U.S. helicopters returned to their base in Honduras after delivering the Guatemalan troops.

“This isolated area has been the scene of increasing hostile guerrilla activity of late, and the Guatemalan government has only limited capacity to transport troops,” Braman said.

The Pentagon and the State Department said the cost of the operation, estimated at between $250,000 and $300,000, will be financed out of Guatemala’s share of U.S. military aid.

Guatemala has been engaged in an off-and-on conflict with Marxist guerrillas since 1954, when a U.S.-backed coup ousted the government of President Jacobo Arbenez.

Aid Resumed in 1985

In the late 1970s, then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter cut off all U.S. aid to Guatemala to protest human rights violations by the military government then in power. The aid program was resumed in 1985 with a tiny $300,000 military training program.

In January, 1986, Cerezo became the first civilian president since the overthrow of Arbenez.

“The United States is committed to providing assistance to democratic governments in Central America and meeting their security needs,” State Department spokesman Gregory Lagana said.

Col. Braman said that the three helicopters, the 12 members of the flight crews and six maintenance personnel are attached to the Army’s 243rd Aviation Co., based at Ft. Lewis, Wash., but have been on temporary assignment at Palmerola air base in Honduras.

U.S. helicopters have been used twice in Honduras to airlift Honduran troops to remote areas of that country. But this was the first time the United States has provided similar help to Guatemala.

Kept Reagan Informed

Lagana and Braman said that President Reagan and Congress were kept fully informed of the operation. They said that the helicopters were unarmed, although the flight crews carried their “personal weapons.”

Lagana said that all 18 U.S. personnel involved in the operation were regular Army troops. He said there were no National Guardsmen or reservists involved. He added that neither the Honduran government nor the Nicaraguan contras, both supported by Washington, played any role.

In July, the United States sent 160 Army troops and six Blackhawk assault helicopters to Bolivia to assist that South American nation in a crackdown on cocaine laboratories.