Sandinistas Raid Honduras Again, Contras Say

The U.S.-backed Nicaraguan rebels and a Honduran military spokesman charged that Nicaraguan troops crossed the border into Honduras again, but U.S. officials said Wednesday they could not confirm a new incursion.

Managua’s Sandinista government emphatically denied the charge. Danilo Abud Vivas, the Nicaraguan ambassador to Honduras, said the allegation was a Honduran “maneuver” to frighten a U.N. commission scheduled to travel to the border from the Nicaraguan capital today to investigate last week’s fighting.

The allegation of another incursion came as Contra leaders and Sandinista officials engaged in a third day of peace talks in Sapoa, Nicaragua. The two sides had agreed to a cease-fire during the talks.

The Sandinista army launched a major offensive against the Contras beginning March 6, and last week Nicaraguan troops crossed the border into Honduras in pursuit of Contras at their main base camps.

In response to the incursion, the Honduran army twice bombed inside Nicaragua and the United States sent about 3,150 troops to Honduras as a show of force.

The Sandinista troops reportedly withdrew from Honduras over the weekend.

The announcement of the first incursion of 1,500 to 2,000 Sandinista troops came from Washington on March 16, many hours before the Honduran government acknowledged that “several hundred” Nicaraguan troops had crossed the border. That sequence of events led to charges here that the Reagan Administration deliberately exaggerated the events to pressure Congress to approve new aid for the Contras.

Contra sources and the Honduran military announced on Wednesday that 300 Sandinistas crossed the border on Tuesday near San Andres de Bocay, a town just inside Nicaragua and the scene of some of last week’s combat.

A Contra source said Nicaraguan troops and guerrillas fought on the Nicaraguan side of the border before the troops crossed the Coco River into Honduras.

Omar Sierra Solorzano, a Honduran military spokesman, said: “We have information a group of Sandinistas penetrated the border. The information is very sketchy.”

Neither the Contras nor the Honduran military could say whether the Nicaraguans were still inside Honduras.

U.S. officials in Washington and at the U.S. Embassy in Honduras said they had no independent confirmation of Tuesday’s incursion and played down the incident--in striking contrast to last week.

A Honduran government official said that President Jose Azcona Hoyo had intended to handle last week’s incursion quietly and diplomatically--”with a low profile”-- before Washington began issuing strong protests.

“The United States had an interest in drawing international attention to this according to their regional interests,” said the official, who asked not to be identified. “Finally there came a time when we couldn’t keep quiet any more.”

Abud Vivas, the Nicaraguan ambassador, said the Honduran government delivered a diplomatic note to the Nicaraguan Embassy in Tegucigalpa on Wednesday protesting the alleged new incursion.

“There has not been an incursion,” the ambassador said. “This is a maneuver to stir fear among the the U.N. technical commission, to make them think that it is not safe to visit the border.”

The inspection team is traveling to the border in response to a Nicaraguan request to the U.N. Security Council to investigate the events surrounding last week’s fighting.