White House Promises Contras It Will Seek Non-Military Aid

The Reagan Administration promised the Nicaraguan Contras on Thursday that it will actively seek renewed non-military aid for them in Congress this month, U.S. officials and rebel leaders said.

“We will seek aid,” an Administration official said after a White House meeting between the Contra leaders and President Reagan’s national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Colin L. Powell. “But the composition of the aid remains up in the air.”

Contra leader Alfredo Cesar said, meanwhile, that the rebels will refuse to return to peace talks with the leftist Sandinista government unless Congress provides them with more assistance.

“The resistance is weak,” he told reporters, “and in such a state there cannot be meaningful negotiations.”

Officially, both the Administration and the Contras said they still hope to persuade Congress to approve military aid for the rebels, whose 15,000-man force has been slowly disintegrating since a truce with the Sandinista regime began at the start of the year.

But officials said it has become clear in talks with both Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress that a request for military aid would be doomed to defeat and that the most the Contras can win is renewed non-military aid.

Democratic leaders in the House have said they are not even certain that the issue will come to a vote before September.

The rebels received more than $113 million in U.S. military funding from 1981 to 1987, but since last September they have received only non-military aid.

In previous years, President Reagan has spearheaded major campaigns to pressure Congress to approve military aid for the Contras. But this year, with a presidential election approaching, the White House has been noticeably reticent about pushing for Contra aid.

“A lot of people on the White House staff have decided that this one is unwinnable already,” one official said.

Reagan told reporters Wednesday that he still supports the idea of military aid for the rebels. “I think it is so apparent that that is what is necessary, it would be ridiculous for us--for anyone--to oppose it,” he said. But he did not commit himself to making a formal request.

Cesar, who has led the Contra delegation in several rounds of talks with the Sandinistas, said the rebels will refuse to return to the negotiations unless Congress renews aid and presidents of other Central American nations get more involved in the negotiating process.