U.S. Official’s Visit Leaves Noriega Opponents Glum

The State Department’s intelligence chief visited Panama on Wednesday to assess the chances of forcing Gen. Manuel A. Noriega out of power, but he reportedly told opposition leaders that they may have to wait until presidential elections next year for Noriega to retire.

Morton Abramowitz, assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, spent the day in Panama meeting separately with opposition leaders and supporters of Noriega, whom the Reagan Administration has been trying to oust without success.

One opposition leader who asked not to be identified said that Abramowitz’s message was: “Hold together, be united. . . . The United States will not abandon you.

“But he also told us to plan for next year’s elections, which sounded as if that is now our only hope for getting rid of Noriega,” the opposition leader said.

Administration officials refused to comment on his account and said Abramowitz’s main mission was merely to determine ways of increasing the pressure on Noriega, a military dictator who was indicted on U.S. drug-trafficking charges in February.

“There is neither a new plan nor negotiations,” White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said.

In Quito, Ecuador, where he was ending a Latin American tour, Secretary of State George P. Shultz said Abramowitz was “just kicking tires . . . (to get) some insights on what’s taking place.” Other officials said he was trying to determine whether Noriega could be forced out through renewed negotiations or through a military coup.

Last month, President Reagan approved a secret plan for covert action to promote unrest in the Panamanian military, officials said, but so far the program has shown no visible results.

Talks With Ruling Party

Abramowitz did not meet with Noriega himself, although he did hold talks with officials of the general’s ruling Revolutionary Democratic Party, officials said.

In Panama, Noriega denounced Abramowitz’s visit as “not only part of the aggression against Panama, but also against Latin America.”

Last spring, State Department envoys tried to negotiate a deal under which Noriega would retire and leave Panama in exchange for U.S. agreement to drop his drug-trafficking indictments, but the talks collapsed in May.

Since then, the United States has maintained an economic and financial boycott of Panama, crippling the country’s economy--but having no clear effect on Noriega’s resolve to remain in power.

Last week, opposition leaders said that Noriega had quietly approached the president he deposed in February, Eric A. Delvalle, with a message asking whether renewed negotiations were possible. Delvalle responded that he was willing to deal with Noriega, but only if the dictator agreed that his own withdrawal from politics would be the goal of the talks. Noriega has not replied, opposition leaders said Wednesday.

Noriega is scheduled to give a major speech Friday, the fifth anniversary of his tenure as chief of Panama’s armed forces. U.S. officials and Panamanian opposition figures once hoped that the general would choose that date to step down, but Panama City was full of rumors that he would instead announce his intention to run for president in elections set for May, 1989.

Meanwhile, several conservative members of Congress introduced a bill calling on the Reagan Administration to abrogate the 1979 Panama Canal Treaties, which will place the U.S.-built canal under Panamanian control on Dec. 31, 1999.

Sen. Steve Symms (R-Ida.) contended that the treaties are invalid because the Senate never ratified changes added by the Panamanian government in 1979.

State Department officials said they believe that the treaties remain valid.

Times staff writer Dan Williams contributed to this story.