NEW YORK -- The United States is arming, training and directing hundreds of rightist Nicaraguan exiles in Honduras in a CIA campaign to destabilize Managua's leftist Sandinista government, Newsweek magazine reported Sunday.
In Washington, a State Department spokesman declined comment on the report, saying, 'We cannot comment until we see the article.'
The magazine said the campaign was the offshoot of a CIA undercover operation to cut off Cuban arms shipments to El Salvador, but has widened to include cross border raids into Nicaragua by rightist exiles.
In the latest of a series of border attacks reported by Nicaraguan authorities, officials said rightist guerrillas beheaded a Sandinista army reservist and his six sons in a raid on a border village 60 miles north of Managua.
Newsweek, citing Reagan administration sources, said the CIA station in Honduras has been doubled to 50 agents supplemented by dozens of operatives, including retired military and intelligence officers.
The magazine said the CIA's mission is to cut off arms shipments to El Salvador, provide logistical support for raids by exiles in Nicaragua and help Argentines and other foreign advisers train the exiles in sabotage operationsusing U.S.-supplied arms.
Ten training camps have been set up in Honduras and Nicaragua for anti-Sandinista forces drawn from former members of the National Guard of dictator Anastasio Somoza and Miskito Indians living near the Honduran border, Newsweek said.
The report said President Reagan authorized the covert operations last December, but under the direction of U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte it had gone far beyond its original mandate.
Urged on by former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Reagan approved $19.9 million for a campaign to cut off arms shipments to El Salvador but also called for the creation of a 500-man exile force trained by the United States.
An additional 1,000 men were to be trained by Argentine military advisers under the plan.
But the Salvadoran guerrillas responded to the campaign to stop the arms flow by shifting their supply routes, while in Nicaragua the Sandinistas undertook a massive military buildup.
'It became clear that cutting the roads from Nicaragua wasn't enough,' Newsweek quoted one source as saying. 'It was necessary to raise the cost to the Sandinistas and the Cubans of meddling in El Salvador.'
At that point, the magazine, said Negroponte turned to harrassment raids by Nicaraguan rightists in an effort to destabilize the Sandinistas.
Honduras received $187 million in U.S. aid last year, and another $78.3 million aid package has been proposed for 1983.
