Reagan Urges a Noriega Deal Despite Protests

President Reagan told his foreign policy advisers Saturday to continue seeking a deal with Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega, despite heated objections from Vice President George Bush and Justice Department officials to any further compromise with the military dictator, White House officials said.

Reagan met for more than two hours with his advisers, including Bush, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III and Secretary of State George P. Shultz, but made no decision on what to do about Noriega, the officials said.

Instead, they said, Reagan agreed that the State Department should continue working to pin down the details of a deal under which the Panamanian general would retire--and go into an exile as brief as seven months--in exchange for dismissal of the U.S. drug indictments against him.

Briefed by Envoy

“The process continues,” White House spokesman Roman Popadiuk told reporters. He said Michael G. Kozak, the deputy assistant secretary of state who has been negotiating with Noriega, briefed Reagan and the others in the meeting on his talks. “There are no immediate plans for Mr. Kozak to return to Panama,” Popadiuk said. “He will remain in Washington for consultations.”

Several officials said the details of a deal with Noriega have still not been agreed upon, although they confirmed that the United States has offered an arrangement under which the Panamanian would retire in exchange for dismissal of the drug-trafficking indictments against him. Under the most recent U.S. proposal, Noriega would retire in August, leave Panama in September, and stay outside the country until after presidential elections in May, 1989, except for a brief visit during the Christmas holidays.

One aim of the plan is to prevent Noriega from playing the role of kingmaker in the 1989 vote, officials said. But key details of the plan--reportedly including the precise timing of Noriega’s departure and the general’s demand for a role in setting up a transition government--have not yet been worked out, they said.

Until the details are nailed down, it is unlikely that either Reagan or Noriega will make a final decision, one official said. “There is no definitive deal or agreement or understanding or anything,” the White House official told reporters.

The proposal has aroused strong opposition from both Bush, who has found the Administration’s past relationship with Noriega a burden in his campaign for the presidency, and some Justice Department officials, who object to dropping the drug indictments.

Bush has come under fire because he met with Noriega both as vice president and as CIA director in the Gerald R. Ford Administration, and was briefed in 1985 about drug problems by the U.S. ambassador to Panama, but has denied any knowledge of Noriega’s role in drug trafficking.

In a television interview broadcast Saturday, White House chief of staff Howard H. Baker Jr. acknowledged that the arguments within the Administration over the Noriega situation have been “heated.”

“If you have the image of a Reagan Administration in which everyone is tranquil and always agrees, that’s wrong,” Baker said on CNN’s “Newsmaker Saturday.”

“Some of the most spirited arguments on some of the most important issues I’ve ever heard occur in the councils of the Reagan Administration, and this is not an exception to that rule.”

But, Baker said, after three months of fruitless pressure on Noriega to step down, Reagan has learned that “your options are very limited; there aren’t very many.”

Since February, the United States has imposed a financial blockade on Panama that has crippled the country’s economy, but failed to budge Noriega from power. The Justice Department is not able to extradite Noriega from Panama because Panamanian law protects the country’s citizens from extradition abroad.

Attending Saturday’s meeting at White House were Reagan, Bush, Baker, Shultz, Meese, Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci, National Security Adviser Colin L. Powell Jr. and CIA Director William Webster.

Manual Noriega is tough and stubborn and will not go quietly. Profile, Page 8.