U.S. Nearing New ‘Vietnam,’ Ortega Warns

President Daniel Ortega said Friday that Thursday’s U.S. Senate vote for military aid to Nicaraguan rebels and this week’s use of U.S.-piloted helicopters on the Honduran border are “concrete steps” toward the use of U.S. troops in Central America.

In a press conference, Ortega defined the Honduran-Nicaraguan border region as “a war zone” and said that any U.S. troops, advisers or helicopters in the area would be considered military targets.

Ortega also said that his Sandinista government has asked the leaders of the four Latin American countries of the Contadora Group and the four that make up a so-called Contadora support group to form a commission to monitor Nicaraguan-Honduran border activities. Such a commission was recently approved for Nicaragua’s southern frontier with Costa Rica.

It was Ortega’s first press conference since the Reagan Administration on Monday accused Nicaragua of invading Honduras with 1,500 troops in pursuit of the contras, as the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan rebels are called. President Reagan authorized the use of U.S. helicopters to move Honduran troops to the troubled border zone, approved $20 million in emergency military aid for Honduras and sent Gen. John R. Galvin, head of the U.S. Southern Command, to Honduras to evaluate the military situation.

U.S. and Honduran officials said that Sandinista soldiers attacked a rebel camp in the isolated Las Vegas salient, a finger of Honduran territory extending southward toward Nicaragua about 150 miles east of Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital. They said the attack was repelled. Honduras later showed reporters the bodies of five dead men whom it identified as Sandinista troops and a quantity of confiscated arms and other military gear as proofs of the incursion.

Initially, Sandinista officials sharply denied that Nicaraguan troops had crossed into Honduras. In the last two days, officials here have stopped short of admitting their forces entered Honduras, but they claim to have destroyed the contras’ principal training center, which is known to be inside Honduras. Ortega said that there has been no combat between Nicaragua and Honduras.

He charged that the recent developments, culminating in the Senate’s passage of Reagan’s $100-million package of military and other aid for the contras, represent the “Vietnamization” of the Central American conflict.

“We are not seeing the simple financing of the mercenary forces (contras). . . . The United States’ President Reagan is taking concrete steps that directly commit U.S. troops in support of the mercenary forces,” Ortega said.

While the Senate voted 53-47 Thursday to approve Reagan’s proposal, the House last week rejected the plan by a 12-vote margin. However, a compromise package of some kind is expected to be approved by both houses next month, perhaps with a requirement that the Administration undertake bilateral negotiations with Nicaragua’s Marxist-led regime.

The Administration, however, wants Ortega’s government to negotiate directly with the contras, something that Ortega repeated Thursday his government will not do.

Ortega said that he believes the use of U.S. helicopters and pilots to transport Honduran troops to the border zone was a more serious affair than the vote in the Senate for contras aid. The two events, together with Gen. Galvin’s visit to Honduras, he said, represent an escalation of U.S. aggression against Nicaragua.

Tense Situation

“These helicopters have been used to move the Honduran army to the border, to the border with Nicaragua that is extremely conflictive, extremely tense, because the mercenary bands are in Honduran territory launching their attacks, their incursions into Nicaragua,” Ortega said.

“The moment that they involve the U.S. Army with their helicopters, their military advisers . . . in support of the mercenary forces, the U.S. officials, the U.S. advisers, the U.S. helicopters will be running the same risk as the mercenary forces. I would not be surprised if tomorrow a U.S. helicopter was shot down by our combatants or if U.S. officials or military advisers appear dead,” Ortega said.

He said that if the helicopters violate Nicaraguan air space, they will be shot down “even if it would mean they launch North American troops into our territory.” Asked if U.S. helicopters would be shot down even if they flew over Honduran territory, Ortega responded, “If they attack us, yes.”

Ortega described recent border-area combat with the contras as a victory for Sandinista soldiers, emphasizing the destruction of the contras training center. He would not be pinned down on the location of the center, but the contras’ principal training center is near Yamales, about 13 miles north of the Nicaraguan border in the Las Vegas salient.

In the process of dodging reporters’ questions about whether Sandinista troops did indeed enter Honduras--saying that Honduran officials and contras leaders both publicly insist the that rebels operate from Nicaragua--Ortega defined the border area as a “war zone,” implying that both sides are a legitimate battleground in the Nicaraguan view.

“Part of the Honduran territory has been occupied by the mercenary forces. Honduras has been losing its sovereignty, its territory and the mercenaries have been becoming owners of this territory because of the decision of the U.S. government,” he said. “The mercenary forces have launched attacks from there and all of this converts into a war zone,” he said.