Contras Aid Not Partisan, Reagan Says : President Holds Firm Against Compromise, Spokesman Declares

President Reagan, shifting tactics in his fight for aid to the Nicaraguan rebels, said Monday that the congressional debate over his proposed $100-million package is “not some narrow partisan issue” pitting Republicans against Democrats but “a national security issue of paramount importance.”

At the same time, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said that Reagan is standing firm on his formula for supporting the rebels with a strong component of covert military aid and is not interested in a compromise with Congress.

“We don’t want any halfway measures,” Speakes told reporters, insisting that the Administration had not intended to send any signals of compromise as it heads into the home stretch of an intense lobbying campaign leading to a showdown House vote March 19.

Position Unchanged

“Sure, we’ll talk,” Speakes said, “but the President has not changed his position.”

Last week, as he sought to build his case for the $100-million package, Reagan portrayed the issue in highly partisan terms, attacking Democrats who oppose military funding of the contras, as the rebels are called, and suggesting that they are playing into the hands of the Soviet Union.

The White House communications director, Patrick J. Buchanan, architect of much of the fiery rhetoric, on Monday defended the Administration’s blunt attack on Democrats as virtually the only way to revive an aid program regarded as “dead in the water” on Capitol Hill.

However, in the wake of charges of “Red-baiting” by outraged Democrats and even some Republicans--charges that appear to have been taken seriously by the White House--Reagan on Monday abandoned his confrontational approach in favor of soothing talk about the virtues of a bipartisan coalition.

Congressmen Exhorted

“This is not some narrow partisan issue,” Reagan said in a talk with conservative supporters. The President, quoting the late Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash.), said, “In matters of national security, the best politics is no politics.”

Reagan devoted much of Monday to exhorting key congressmen on the importance of supporting his aid package, meeting with up to half a dozen recalcitrant House Republicans in one-on-one sessions in the Oval Office.

The White House refused to disclose the names of the congressmen called to see Reagan. When asked if any Democrats were invited, Speakes said that the list included “people who claim to be Republican only,” a remark that reflected White House irritation at the extraordinary lobbying measures that Reagan has been forced to take even within his own party.

Reagan will make a nationally televised speech Sunday evening, the culmination of his effort to publicize the need he sees for the United States to support the rebels in their fight against the Marxist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Buchanan, meanwhile, said in a luncheon interview with reporters that the decision to play rhetorical hard ball was made in a Saturday session at the White House nine days ago.

“We agreed we would have to go at it bluntly and directly if we were going to expect some results,” he said. “The press said it was dead in the water, and we had no reason to disagree.”

Buchanan said that the President and Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan readily agreed that a more aggressive campaign was required to put Democrats on notice that they would be held responsible for the defeat of the aid package and “a second Cuba” on America’s doorstep. Since that decision, the White House has concentrated on the contras almost to the exclusion of all other issues, including such high-priority matters as the budget and tax reform.

Rhetoric Criticized

Some Republicans as well as Democrats have complained that the harsh rhetoric that resulted has smacked of McCarthyism and may be counterproductive. They singled out an editorial page column that Buchanan wrote for the Washington Post, which said that by cutting arms shipments to the contras, “the national Democratic Party has now become, with Moscow, co-guarantor of the Brezhnev doctrine in Central America.” (In 1968, Leonid I. Brezhnev, the late Kremlin leader, proclaimed that the Soviet Union had the right to intervene to protect Communist states threatened by capitalism.)

Buchanan, asked if such complaints bothered him, replied: “No . . . not in the least.” He said that he did not show his column to the President or Regan before submitting it to the Post but that a member of the National Security Council and Elliott Abrams, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, had reviewed it for accuracy and political impact.

Buchanan maintained that Reagan’s advisers are unanimous in their support of the aggressive campaign being waged on behalf of the contras and that it has won over several members of Congress who previously had opposed the aid.

Regional Visit

Meanwhile, William H. Taft IV, deputy secretary of defense, returned Friday from a five-day trip to Central America and Venezuela, where he found civilian and military leaders united in their concern that “the Sandinista government, on its present course, is incompatible with the survivability of their democracies,” a senior Pentagon official said Monday.

The official, speaking on the condition that he not be identified by name, said that while the leaders in the region support negotiations with the Sandinistas, “they also support a covert program of assistance to the armed insurgents in Nicaragua.”

“The presidents of Costa Rica, Honduras and El Salvador could not have been clearer in private that a covert program of military support for the contras was something they very much want to have,” the official said.

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this story.