U.S. Weighing Ways to Send Contras Food

WASHINGTON — The Reagan Administration, risking hostile reaction from Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, said Friday that it is considering various options to send U.S. assistance to thousands of Contras inside Nicaragua who are facing acute food shortages.

A temporary cease-fire agreed to by the Contras and the Sandinista government March 23 allows for such aid, but no shipments have been made inside Nicaragua because of an impasse in negotiations between the two sides on the conditions for a more permanent truce.

State Department spokesman Charles Redman said the alternatives include direct deliveries of food to rebel forces or cash payments to be used for food purchases. Any such move would almost certainly touch off a vigorous protest from the Marxist-led Managua regime.

Although Redman provided no specifics, the aid--whether food or cash--apparently would be sent into Nicaragua by way of rebel forces based in Contra camps in Honduras near the Nicaraguan border.

The Sandinistas maintain that U.S. non-lethal aid can be delivered only after the guerrillas have been resettled in seven designated cease-fire zones and only then if a verification commission confirms that the aid packages’ contents are authorized under the March 23 agreement, signed at Sapoa, Nicaragua.

But no Contras have been resettled because there has been no agreement on regulations governing activities in the cease-fire zones. Both the Administration and the Contras have accused the Sandinistas of resorting to delaying tactics to deny the rebels food.

Meanwhile in Nicaragua, two government soldiers said they were shot and wounded by Contras on Thursday after they tried to speak with the rebels.

The soldiers said they were among a group of Sandinistas who approached about 40 Contras in the town of El Colorado, about 140 miles southeast of Managua.

Luis Noel Solano Jarquin, a Sandinista soldier, said from his hospital room in Juigalpa that the Contras said that only top rebel and government leaders could conduct “conversations between the two sides.”

“Suddenly we heard shots and had to disband,” he said.

Solano Jarquin nursed a wounded left arm. Another soldier, Trinidad Bermudez, had fractured ribs and a broken forearm.