Noriega Affair Ruined Latin Confidence in Washington, Canadian Says

U.S. failure to force Gen. Manuel A. Noriega from power in Panama has destroyed Central American nations’ confidence that Washington can protect the region and solve its problems, a former speaker of Canada’s House of Commons said Thursday.

John Bosley, former leader of Canada’s ruling Progressive Conservative Party, was one of six members of a Canadian parliamentary committee that recently visited six Latin American countries in search of ideas to promote peace in the region.

He told reporters that national leaders who oppose Noriega’s military rule in Panama now have a strong sense that they must take charge of their own problems and their own security.

“One of the things driving their attitude is that you can no longer go around with a sign on your back saying, ‘The United States will protect me,’ ” Bosley said. “Panama has destroyed that for them and has strengthened their sense that a solution to their problems has to be indigenous.”

The Reagan Administration, which has tried by negotiation to get Noriega to step down and has imposed economic sanctions in an effort to force him out, has been criticized for not involving other Latin American governments.

Several members of the Canadian delegation said that strife in Central America is a major foreign policy issue in Canada, in part because of Canada’s trade ties to the region and in part because of Canadian church and peace groups’ concerns about the confrontational U.S. approach.

The most critical member of the delegation was William Blaikie, a member of Canada’s left-wing New Democratic Party. He accused the United States of trying to force regional conflicts into an East-West framework.

“That was certainly the John Foster Dulles view of the world we got from the American ambassador in Honduras,” Blaikie said, referring to the secretary of state under President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s and to Ambassador Everett E. Briggs. “Everybody is filled up to here with American monkey business.”

Blaikie said that Washington must accept the need for local initiative to resolve conflicts. In the Nicaraguan guerrilla war, Blaikie said, many Canadians sympathize with the Sandinista government but oppose the linking of the army and government to the Sandinistas’ political party.

The Canadians said they met with Alfredo Cesar, an official of the anti-Sandinista Contras, and Bosley described him as impressive. But Lloyd Axworthy, like Bosley a conservative, said that in the combat areas of Nicaragua he had found little support for the Contras.