U.S. Decides to Send Troops to Honduras : Reagan Agrees ‘in Principle’ to Request by Ally for More GIs to Deter Sandinistas

President Reagan has decided “in principle” to send additional U.S. troops to Honduras in response to a Nicaraguan incursion into the country, but the soldiers will be sent as a show of force with orders to stay out of combat, Administration officials said Wednesday.

Honduran President Jose Azcona Hoyo formally requested U.S. military assistance in a meeting with U.S. Ambassador Everett Briggs on Wednesday evening, and officials said they expected Reagan to approve the request by this morning.

Azcona asked for more U.S. troops to deter Nicaragua’s Sandinista forces from advancing farther into Honduras after they crossed the border to attack the bases of U.S.-backed Contras, officials said.

The Honduran leader also asked for additional U.S. helicopters to ferry Honduran units into the battle zone, along the Coco River in a remote jungle region about 140 miles east of Tegucigalpa, the capital, they said. One official said there were indications that the Honduran army plans to mount a counterattack against the Sandinistas if the Nicaraguan forces do not withdraw today.

Decision Reportedly Made

“The President has already decided to respond positively to Azcona’s request,” one U.S. official said. “It’s a matter of crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s.”

As many as 4,000 U.S. troops--probably from the army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division--will land in Honduras to join the 2,000 American soldiers already in the country, the officials said.

Reagan and his aides condemned Nicaragua heatedly for its incursion into Honduras. U.S. officials said the operation involved an estimated 1,500 Sandinista troops backed up by Soviet-supplied helicopters and artillery. The Sandinista attack appeared aimed at the Contras’ main supply depots and their strategic command center, both of which are on the Honduran side of the Coco.

Border Inspection Urged

In Managua, the Nicaraguan capital, President Daniel Ortega said his troops have driven 2,000 Contras from key Nicaraguan bases into Honduras, but he did not confirm or deny U.S. charges that the troops pursued the rebels across the border into Honduras. He also called for an international inspection of the border to head off what he called the threat of U.S. military intervention.

White House officials said the Sandinista action should prompt Congress to approve renewed U.S. military aid to the Contras. Congress rejected military aid last month, but Reagan has said he will continue to seek new funding for the rebels.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz said the Sandinista incursion posed “a genuine national security problem for the United States.” Reagan, asked by reporters about the situation, said simply: “Obviously we’re concerned.”

U.S. helicopters have ferried Honduran units to battle zones before, in March and December, 1986, after similar Sandinista incursions across the border.

Exercises in Honduras

Additional American troops also have landed in Honduras repeatedly since 1981 to participate in military exercises which also carried a thinly veiled goal of warning Nicaragua against any action against Honduras.

The nearly 2,000 U.S. troops now in Honduras include 1,100 assigned to the air base at Palmerola and about 850 on temporary maneuvers. An estimated 40 U.S. helicopters are deployed in the country.

Both U.S. and Contra officials said the Sandinista offensive, if it succeeds in destroying the rebels’ command center and their main ammunition stores, could deal a serious--if not mortal--blow to the Contra effort.

“The main problem is the command and control center,” Contra spokesman Bosco Matamoros said.

Camps Attacked

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater charged that the Sandinistas were “attacking freedom fighters’ camps in an effort to destroy their remaining supplies.”

“There is not sufficient (Contra) troop strength or artillery and military support there to repel the (Sandinista) forces at this point,” he said.

“We consider this a very serious breach of regional borders and an offensive act that threatens the stability of all the countries in the region. This is an intrusion into the sovereign territory of Honduras, and it makes a mockery of the Sandinista pledge for complying with the Guatemalan peace plan,” Fitzwater said.

Sandinista and Contra representatives are scheduled to meet Monday in a new round of cease-fire talks stemming from a Central American peace plan signed in Guatemala last August. Matamoros said the Contras intend to attend the meeting despite their reportedly perilous situation on the battlefield.

Key Bases Overrun

The Sandinistas launched their offensive against the Contras on Tuesday, sending thousands of troops into the Bocay River valley of northern Nicaragua and overrunning the rebels’ main bases there.

The Sandinistas prepared for the offensive with a week of aerial bombing, used multiple rocket launchers and long-range artillery to aid their advance, and ferried troops to the battlefield by helicopter, Matamoros said.

Contra officials said the Sandinista troops appeared to have crossed the border into Honduras in an attempt to encircle some rebel units. Nicaraguan troops have pursued Contra units into Honduran territory several times during the seven-year-long guerrilla war, then withdrew after several days.

A crisis atmosphere gripped official Washington for much of Wednesday, touched off in part by Fitzwater’s declaration in the morning press briefing that “At this moment, everything is being considered now, short of invasion” of Nicaragua.

Congressmen Briefed

But as Administration officials briefed worried members of Congress on their plans, the fears of direct U.S. military action began to dissipate.

Although the Administration’s public statements portrayed Nicaragua as undertaking a large-scale invasion of Honduras, officials appeared unable during a private session with congressional leaders to present evidence that the situation was as dire as it first appeared.

House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.), who spent an hour and a half with Shultz, Lt. Gen. Colin L. Powell, Reagan’s national security adviser, and White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr., told reporters: “The Administration is making somewhat unclear references to a crisis.”

Expressing some skepticism about the Administration’s report, the Speaker said, “I want to have verification and good, solid information.”

He said that he was attempting to verify the Administration’s statements “by our own intelligence sources” and that he had sought a report on his own from Honduras and Nicaragua “to get a good reading.”

Troop Pullout Ordered

Wright also said that Miguel D’Escoto, the Nicaraguan foreign minister, assured him in a telephone conversation at mid-afternoon that Ortega had already ordered the withdrawal of any Nicaraguan troops in Honduran territory.

“I told him the United States would regard any invasion as a serious matter,” Wright said.

Contra spokesman Matamoros called Wright’s statement “a surrealistic justification of Sandinista behavior. A massive movement of forces across a sizable river does not happen inadvertently.”

Matamoros charged that the Sandinistas remained in Honduras despite their promises to withdraw. “We continue to be shelled from Honduran territory,” he said.

Aid Plans Uncertain

Despite the urgent meetings in the White House and in the Capitol throughout the day, Reagan’s plans for requesting new aid for the Contras remained uncertain, with White House officials, the State Department and Wright all saying the Administration had not yet set its course. Aid from the last assistance package approved for the rebels ended Feb. 29, and Congress has defeated several new proposals.

Wright, who has played a central role in opposing the Administration’s request for military aid for the Contras but sought unsuccessfully to win approval earlier this month for a package of non-lethal assistance, said “we are amenable to hearing what they have to say now, and working something out.”

But Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) said he was “highly suspicious of the Administration’s motives,” adding that “using this kind of invasion as a way to justify increased military assistance for the Contras is more hype than reality.”

Documentation Missing

And California Rep. Tony Coelho, (D-Merced), the House majority whip, complained that Administration officials were unable to document the seriousness of the incursion.

“The problem we have with the White House is that history is replete with cases of misleading both the Congress and the people,” Coelho said. “We . . . we want to believe him, but we are getting conflicting information.”

Among Reagan’s supporters, Rep. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), the House minority whip, told reporters: “The facts are clear. The Sandinistas are in Honduras. There is an attack going on, affecting the freedom fighters. Their target is to destroy the resistance supplies within Honduras.”

And California Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) declared: “Ortega has spit in Jim Wright’s face. How many times can this little Communist thug slap Jim Wright around, before he stands up like a Texan?”

But one Administration official was cynical. “If the Sandinistas are smart, they’ll get out tonight, and we won’t have anything to show for this,” he said. “In 72 hours, nobody will give a damn.”

Times staff writers Josh Getlin and Don Shannon contributed to this article.