Rival Factions Share Building : Panama’s U.S. Embassy: It Operates on Two Levels

Panama’s embassy here is a house divided--even subdivided--by the struggle for national leadership at home.

Ambassador Juan B. Sosa, loyal to deposed President Eric A. Delvalle and recognized by the Reagan Administration, holds the keys to the building and has an office on the upper floor. He also controls the first-floor entry area, where a portrait of Delvalle is prominently displayed on the wall.

At the rear of the lower floor, however, is the office of Roberto Leyton, Panama’s envoy to the Organization of American States. Leyton remains loyal to Panama’s military strongman, Gen. Manuel A. Noriega, and his office displays a large poster of a smiling Noriega wearing fatigues.

Even the second floor is not all Delvalle’s. Capt. Jose S. Motta continues to function on the upper floor as Panama’s military attache, although he does not acknowledge Sosa as his boss.

“It’s peaceful coexistence,” Flavio Mendez, second deputy to Sosa, said in an interview Friday.

“We like him (Motta) and we talk,” Mendez said. “All of us in the building are on good terms--after all, we’re Panamanians.”

But nobody, no matter whose side he’s on, is getting paid.

Leyton gets a check from the government of President Manuel Solis Palma, who was installed by Noriega’s compliant legislature when Delvalle was fired after he tried and failed to dislodge Noriega.

But Leyton said that his paycheck is drawn on a New York bank account that, along with other Panamanian assets in the United States, has been frozen by a U.S. court at Delvalle’s request.

Sosa, Mendez and other embassy staff members who have declared for Delvalle get no checks at all.

“It’s only been 20 days,” Mendez said, “and we’re living on savings.”

Leyton said he was annoyed that U.S. courts allowed Delvalle to control Panama’s assets.

“It sets a bad precedent because the (Panamanian) constitution does not give the executive total financial power,” Leyton said. “We have an elected comptroller, and the national legislature has a voice in money decisions also.”

Leyton said that Panama’s ambassador to the United Nations, Jose Eduardo Ritter, is seeking legal counsel to contest the freeze order. Ritter is a Noriega loyalist, but another Panamanian diplomat in New York--the consul general --backs Delvalle.

“Incidentally,” Leyton said, “I don’t like being called a Noriega man, because I represent the government of my country. I am the ambassador of my country to the OAS.”

Leyton, who retained his seat in the OAS in the face of a challenge from a Delvalle representative, said he hopes that the political dilemma will be resolved before the “destruction of the economy.” All the political parties must be brought into a national dialogue, he said.

“The only way is if we all sit at the same table,” Leyton said. “Time is running out and national elections are coming in 1989.”

The divided loyalties of the Panamanian diplomats in Washington have bred some semi-comic cases of mistaken identity.

A Wisconsin arms exporter called the embassy last week, for example, to discuss an order by the Noriega regime for up to 30,000 Belgian semiautomatic pistols. But the exporter, Leo Wanta, president of AmeriChina Global Management Group, was connected not to a Noriega loyalist but to Sosa, who asked for a copy of the arms deal.

Sosa promptly told the U.S. government about the deal. “I’m not going to give Panama nothing now,” Wanta was quoted by the Milwaukee Journal as saying.

Although earlier reports said that Wanta lacked State Department authorization to sell arms abroad, Wanta said that he had applied to the department for a license that would have allowed him to earn $10 per weapon.

State Department spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley said Friday that the sale had been investigated but that, because the weapons would actually be shipped from Belgium to Panama, the United States could not legally bar the deal.