Contras, Short of Cash, Food, May Pull Back

The U.S.-backed Nicaraguan rebels are planning to withdraw most of their troops from Nicaragua in the wake of Congress’ vote last week to halt their American funding, Reagan Administration officials and Contra sources said Friday.

The withdrawal, which would represent a virtual collapse of the Contras’ military effort, has not been ordered yet, the officials said. But it will begin soon unless the rebels receive a new infusion of money, food and other aid, they said.

“Our forces are fighting in the face of the specter of starvation,” Contra military spokesman Bosco Matamoros said. “The possibility of starvation has become a real factor for us.”

Matamoros and Contra leader Adolfo Calero said that no firm decision has been made to withdraw the rebels’ estimated 12,000 troops from Nicaragua into neighboring Honduras and Costa Rica. But other Contras and U.S. officials said that preparations for a pullout have already begun.

‘Orderly Withdrawal’

“We have a moral obligation to our people to save as many as we can,” one rebel officer said. “We are trying to plan what you could call a painful but orderly withdrawal from the battlefield.”

“The Contras simply ate up too many of their resources too fast,” a U.S. official who has worked on the supply program said. “They’re pretty close to being in desperate straits. . . . Th1701995815thing.”

The tone of their comments was a striking change from Administration forecasts two weeks ago, when officials said that the Contras could continue fighting even if Congress rejected a Democratic-sponsored plan to give them $30.5 million in non-lethal aid.

With President Reagan’s encouragement, House Republicans voted that plan down as insufficient--leaving the rebels with no U.S. aid.

In retrospect, one Administration official said, that may have been a major tactical error. “We knew that the Contras were running low, but we chose to stick it to the Democrats,” he said. “The whole thing is closer to falling apart than anyone wanted to admit.”

Both U.S. and Contra officials acknowledged that they are sounding the alarm on the rebels’ situation in the hope that Congress will reverse itself. But they said that they see little chance of congressional action before a troop withdrawal becomes necessary.

A group of moderate and conservative senators is working on a proposal for about $30 million in non-lethal aid, but House Democrats said that the measure has no serious chance of passing before June 15.

The Contras say they don’t have that much time. Both U.S. and rebel officials said that Contra units deep inside Nicaragua will run out of food and other supplies by the middle of April.

Intense Conflicts

“We have had several problems in obtaining sufficient food,” Matamoros said. “The conflict has been very intense; our forces have had more engagements in a month than the guerrillas in El Salvador have in a year. And the Sandinistas have depopulated certain parts of the country by moving the inhabitants to resettlement areas with the strategic objective of starving our forces.”

In the past, the Contras and the Administration frequently have claimed that most of the rebels’ food was donated or sold by sympathetic farmers in Nicaragua. But U.S. officials acknowledged that the rebels have become increasingly dependent on food supplies air-dropped into Nicaragua by foreign pilots under contract to the CIA.

The Sandinistas have also taken advantage of the Contras’ financial straits to press a new offensive against the rebels’ main infiltration route in the Bocay River valley of northern Nicaragua. A large force of Sandinista troops was reported moving into the valley Friday, and the Sandinista air force has bombed rebel units in the area, although the Contras say that the bombing has not been accurate enough to have much effect.

If the rebels order a major withdrawal, the Bocay will be one of their major routes out of Nicaragua into Honduras, officials said.

Problem for Honduras

A Contra pullout would create major problems for the government of Honduras, which has been the rebels’ increasingly uncomfortable host since the Sandinistas took power in Nicaragua in 1979. Contra officials said that their troops, which they estimated at 12,000 to 15,000, would be accompanied by thousands of family members and as many as 10,000 sympathizers.

Democrats in Congress periodically have offered to provide resettlement aid to help the Contras if their military effort collapses, but no one has solved the problem of where the remnants of the rebel force would end up--in Honduras, elsewhere in Central America or in the United States.

However, Calero and other Contra officials insisted that any withdrawal would be only temporary, awaiting an eventual infusion of aid. The Contras withdrew most of their troops from Nicaragua once before, in 1986, after they ran out of Saudi Arabian aid that Reagan and his former national security adviser, Robert C. McFarlane, had obtained for them.

The recognition of their perilous supply situation is one of the factors that impelled the Contras to reverse position this week and agree to enter cease-fire talks with the Sandinista regime, the officials said. “The only thing that will make an orderly withdrawal possible is a cease-fire within the next two or three weeks,” said one official.

Supply Crunch Not a Factor

However, Calero denied that the supply crunch was a factor. “We will go to the talks to achieve peace and freedom, which means democracy,” he said in a telephone interview. “If we do not succeed, we will continue fighting.”

Calero and the other Contra leaders announced Thursday that they will attend cease-fire talks with the Sandinistas next week at a location near Nicaragua’s frontier with Costa Rica. The Contras previously had rejected participation in the talks unless their agenda included a new political dialogue, freedom of the press and an end to compulsory military service inside Nicaragua.

The sudden realization that their American funding was about to run dry has provoked a torrent of bitter anti-American rhetoric from Contra leaders, who seem nearly as angry at the Reagan Administration as at the Democratic opposition.

“The United States has turned out to be an unreliable ally,” Calero complained. “The Soviet Union, through its continuing support of the Sandinistas, is much more reliable. The old Mexican saying is right: ‘The Americans are weak enemies and dangerous allies.’ ”