WASHINGTON, Reuter: With 100 million dollars in U.S. aid to Rightwing rebels now virtually assured, President Reagans critics are warning that he is on a risky path that could lead American troops into combat in Nicaragua,

Opponents of Reagans policy of military pressure on Manauga are drawing analogies with the 1961 bay of pigs fiasco, in which a U.S. Backed army of antifoam monist Cuban exiles was  annihilated shortly after it landed in Cuba, and with Americas defeat in Vietnam,

The syndrome of the Quagmire, slowly but surely sucking US, deeper into an endless military conflict that we cannot escape, applies to Nicaragua as much as it did Vietnam, said Senator Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts demo rat,

Reagan, saying leftist Nicaragua posed a military threat to its neigh ours and the United States, had pressed Congress strongly for the aid, It would be administered by the CIA and would come with U.S. advisers and military trainers.

The Senate approved the aid package. The House of Representatives approved one earlier and a Joint bill is likely to be passed soon clearing the way for aid to the Contra rebels to resume after a gap of two years.

The Contras have been employing hit-and-run guerrilla tactics from enclaves in Honduras and Costa Rica with their forces dispersed to avoid decisive defeat

But, with the renewal of aid, the Contras will be trained as regular army units for conventional pitched battles, congressional sources said.

Within a year, the Contras are expected to drive into Nicaragua, seize a lightly defended area, and declare a provisional government, which would then be recognized by the United States, according to Senator Jim Sesser, a Tennessee democrat.

He said he had been told of probable was scenarios by in for med U.S. officials.

Likely areas for a Contra drive were Puerto Cabezas, on the At Jantic Coast, or portions of Nueva Segovia, a Northern Province, and congressional sources said.

Sesser, speaking on the Senate floor last week, warned that a Contra enclave in Nicaragua

Would come under intense attack by the Sandinista government’s forces and could face annihilation, just as the Cuban exile army did at the Bay of Pigs.

Washington would face the choice of being humiliated by a Contra defeat or sending in U.S. combat troops, with the likelihood of a protracted war which lacked the backing of the American people, Sasser said.

Nicaragua has a regular army of over 50,000 with a fleet of Soviet made combat helicopters and  100,000 man militia, The Contras are now estimated to number  about 15,000.

Article extracted from this publication >> August 22, 1986