Carlucci Says GIs Will Stay 10 Days; Protest Spreading : No Combat Plans, He Reiterates

Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci said today that U.S. soldiers will come home in 10 days after conducting exercises in Honduras and reiterated that there are no plans for them to engage in combat.

In Honduras, U.S. transport planes dropped about 800 U.S. Army paratroopers onto a dusty airfield near the small rural hamlet of Flores early today, completing the deployment of an estimated 3,200 American troops in response to Nicaraguan-Contra border fighting.

Troops being flown to Honduras included the 82nd Airborne Division from Ft. Bragg, N.C., and the 7th Light Infantry Division, based at Ft. Ord, Calif.

“The plan is for the exercise to last approximately 10 days,” Carlucci said on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America.”

“There are no plans for these troops to engage in combat, and we never comment on (other) contingency plans, of course,” he said.

No Casualty Figures

Fighting continues between Nicaraguan government forces and the Contra rebels, with the U.S.-backed rebels forced to pull back from some of their positions, Carlucci said.

“We don’t have an accurate count of casualties, but people are being wounded and killed,” he said.

Carlucci said it is difficult to tell how many Sandinista troops had crossed the Honduran border because the incursion was taking place in a remote area. He said 1,500 to 2,000 Sandinista troops have been amassed in the border area since March 1.

Asked if there have been any significant victories or defeats in the fighting, Carlucci said: “No, I wouldn’t characterize it in those terms, although the freedom fighters (Contras) have had to fall back a bit. They’ve had to abandon some of their positions and move to other positions.”

He said there are no plans to move any other U.S. land, sea or air forces into the area.

‘Our Moral Support’

Carlucci said he is confident that the Honduran troops will “take whatever measures they consider appropriate to defend themselves. We stand by to be helpful and we are showing our moral support through the exercise.”

The U.S. paratroopers made their jumps in two separate passes of their eight C-141 transport planes today, landing beneath a hazy sky near the Palmerola Air Base. The 7 a.m. exercise took about two minutes.

Shortly after the paratroopers hit the ground, high-ranking Western diplomatic sources said Nicaraguan forces began to retreat from the Honduran side of the Coco River on Thursday after Honduran air strikes against them.

A U.S. military spokesman said that the troops will not stay at Palmerola, about 125 miles west of the fighting, but that U.S. and Honduran military authorities have not decided where the Americans will be deployed.

As the Americans arrived, Honduras sent an undisclosed number of troops toward the Nicaraguan border “to repel the Sandinista troops that are still found in our territory,” army spokesman Col. Manuel Suarez Benavidez said.

Honduran Troops on Move

In Tegucigalpa, about 35 miles away from Palmerola, a military official said Honduran troops were moving along the rugged frontier today and warplanes were on standby to oust Nicaraguan soldiers.

On Thursday, Honduran warplanes fired bombs and rockets at Nicaraguan army targets along the border. The Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry blamed Washington and delivered a formal protest to the United States.

There were conflicting reports about the raids.

Reagan Administration officials said a Sandinista army helicopter in Nicaragua was destroyed, but Nicaragua denied that.

Honduras said its air force fired rockets only inside its own territory.