Contras Driven From Key Bases, Ortega Says : Nicaraguan President Cites Threat of Invasion by U.S., Calls on People to Be ‘Ready for Combat’

President Daniel Ortega said Wednesday that Sandinista troops have driven 2,000 Contras from key Nicaraguan bases into Honduras. He urged an international inspection of the embattled border to head off what he called the threat of U.S. military intervention.

In his first detailed account of the 10-day Sandinista offensive, Ortega did not confirm or deny U.S. charges that Nicaraguan troops pursued the rebels across the Coco River into Honduras. He reported continued shelling between Contra and Sandinista forces on opposite banks and said U.S. Army helicopters were evacuating Contra wounded.

“This operation has achieved its objective of totally dislodging the mercenary forces from logistics and supply bases near the border,” Ortega told the nation in a radio address. “The United States is now threatening to use its military forces to defend these positions.

“The threat . . . over our country at this moment is the greatest in all these years of war,” Ortega said. He called on “all the Nicaraguan people to be on alert, ready for combat.”

U.S. to Send Troops

Ortega spoke as the Reagan Administration decided to send 3,200 U.S. troops to Honduras--at that nation’s request--as a show of force against the alleged Sandinista incursion. In a sign of his concern, the Nicaraguan leader summoned his Cabinet and other Sandinista officials to hear his speech.

He accused Washington of launching “a disinformation campaign” to justify escalating the 6-year-old conflict and to win new U.S. aid for the Contras and sabotage cease-fire talks set for next Monday between Sandinista and rebel negotiators.

Ortega said he had asked the United Nations and the Organization of American States to send inspectors to the border to report on the fighting.

The Sandinista offensive focused on San Andres de Bocay, site of the Contras’ main base in northern Nicaragua, and a nearby airstrip. The base, a distribution point for supplies flown from Contra positions in Honduras, is at the confluence of the Bocay and Amakas rivers, about three miles south of the border in uninhabited jungle.

Since the cutoff of U.S. military aid and CIA-supervised airdrops to the Contras on Feb. 29, the rebels had been relying on the base as their principal relay point inside Nicaragua for overland shipments of munitions, boots and food to an estimated 10,000 fighters.

Claims 92 Killed

Ortega said the army killed at least 92 Contras while losing 34 dead and 68 wounded.

He did not say how many government troops were involved.

Ortega said the offensive began March 6. Washington officials and most Contra sources have said it began Tuesday, although some Contra spokesman said the offensive was preceded by days of artillery bombardment.

Pointing to a map, Ortega indicated that Sandinista forces approached the area from the southwest and drove the rebels across the Coco River along a seven-mile stretch between Mukuwas and Wayawas. The operation was completed Wednesday, he said, but some Sandinista forces remain in the area.

A rebel spokesman, Bosco Matamoros, said by telephone that 7,500 Sandinista troops took part and that 1,000 of them crossed into Honduras to try to encircle retreating Contra forces. He said 40 Sandinistas and five rebels were killed.

The Sandinista army drove the rebels from the same area last May and later acknowledged having pursued them into Honduras. The government has justified other cross-border raids as attacks on “border territory” that Honduras had, in effect, ceded to the Contras.

No Denial of Incursion

In his speech Wednesday, Ortega did not categorically deny such an incursion but said there had been no combat with the U.S.-backed Honduran army. He defended the operation as an act of national self-defense.

“According to the Reagan Administration, Nicaragua does not have the right to defend its territorial integrity, while the mercenaries do have a right to murder the Nicaraguan people, attack public transport and destroy schools,” he said. Ortega said U.S. Army Chinook helicopters had ferried wounded Contras from the area for the past four days, and he threatened that they would be shot down if they violated Nicaraguan airspace.

In calling for an on-site investigation, Ortega said inspectors should not only report what happened in the border fighting but also recommend how to withdraw Contra forces from Honduras, as called for in the Central American peace agreement of last August.

‘Honduras Not Complying’

“There lies the problem,” he said.

“Honduras is not complying with the agreement. The United States will not let it comply and is obliging Honduras to maintain the Contra camps.”

Ortega said he had sought support for such an inspection in telephone calls Wednesday to the presidents of Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica and El Salvador, but he did not report their reactions.

The agreement signed by the five presidents called for outside inspections to monitor compliance.

But a 13-nation inspection team headed by U.N. and OAS officials was scrapped in January, at the insistence of Honduras and El Salvador, and has not been replaced.

Ortega said that he and President Jose Azcona Hoyo of Honduras had spoken three times by phone since Tuesday but reached no agreement on Ortega’s offer of a meeting between the two.