Managua Sees Contras as Trying to Provoke Clash

Defense Minister Humberto Ortega charged Friday that the Reagan Administration and the Contras are trying to provoke a clash between Nicaraguan and Honduran forces that would justify U.S. intervention against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

Ortega, brother of President Daniel Ortega, said that the Nicaraguan military is bracing “to counteract this danger of a greater conflict” and warned Contra soldiers camped in Honduras that they will be “annihilated” if they try to resume fighting.

Speaking to reporters at a celebration of the Sandinista Popular Army’s ninth anniversary, Ortega said that the Contras, most of whom have pulled out of Nicaragua to camps in southern Honduras, have been attacking Sandinista positions inside Nicaragua, trying to get the government troops to respond and provoke a border clash with regular Honduran army troops.

“The presence of Contra forces in Honduras. . . , watched over by the Honduran army, poses a danger of a bigger conflict between Honduran forces” and Sandinista troops “provoked by the government of the United States,” he said.

“They are constantly provoking those (Nicaraguan) units, mortaring us and machine-gunning us to try to provoke a response that will justify the presence of Yankee troops,” Ortega said. “This is part of the alternative plans to a failed Contra effort to provoke greater conflicts between Honduras and Nicaragua.”

Meantime, the head of Honduras’ armed forces, Gen. Humberto Regalado, lashed out in Tegucigalpa on Friday at politicians in his country who are calling for military spending cuts. He said such cuts would weaken Honduras’ ability to defend itself in an already war-torn region.

“Despite what voices of disinformation . . . claim maliciously and tendentiously, the armed forces of Honduras are the smallest in number in Central America,” Regalado said in a speech at a military ceremony.

Honduras’ armed forces total around 19,000 personnel, and some members of the nation’s Congress have urged reductions in military spending as part of austerity measures.