Carter Calls Vote in Panama ‘Fraud’ : U.S. Won’t Rule Out Using Force Against Regime

The Bush Administration said Monday that it will consider every option, including the use of military force, to prevent Gen. Manuel A. Noriega from stealing Panama’s presidential election, but non-government experts said that U.S. policy-makers have very few attractive choices.

“We’re not ruling out anything,” one Administration official said. “We specifically refuse to rule out the military option. I don’t want to hype that but I don’t want to downplay it either.”

Few outside experts believe the United States will use force against Panama, but the Administration apparently hopes that Noriega at least will consider the possibility of American military action before official election results are announced.

The National Security Council called a meeting for today to consider the Panama situation.

Still Time for Honest Count

Although U.S. officials for weeks have been accusing Noriega of trying to rig Sunday’s election, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said there is still time for Panama’s de facto ruler to permit an honest count.

“Our embassy reports that independent exit polls project the opposition coalition with 68% of the vote and the regime coalition with 23%,” Boucher said. “(Noriega should) publish results fairly and freely and then take . . . the necessary action, to let the winner win.”

But few U.S. officials think that will happen. Later in the day, the State Department issued a statement: “We are deeply concerned by evidence pouring in of electoral fraud on the part of the pro-Noriega forces.” It cited a report by members of European parliaments that as many as 127,000 ballots were destroyed.

If the election is swayed by fraud, the Bush Administration will be faced with the same agonizing problem that the Reagan Administration was unable to solve: What can a superpower do to force the military leader of a small but strategically located country to yield power to an elected government?

“There is one basic decision: Are you going to force him out or aren’t you?” said a former official who served under President Ronald Reagan. “The Reagan Administration decided not to. The Bush Administration has to make that decision. I think the answer is no because of opposition from the Pentagon.”

The official, who asked not to be identified by name, said the Defense Department maintains that if the United States uses its bases in Panama as a jumping-off point for armed action against the Panamanian government, countries such as Turkey and the Philippines will be more reluctant to permit American bases to remain on their territory.

However, U.S. Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Connie Mack (R-Fla.) told a Miami press conference that it is time for the U.S. government to consider military action to topple Noriega. The lawmakers were members of a White House-appointed delegation that observed the election, but they returned to the United States ahead of the other observers.

“I believe the United States should now consider the use of force in Panama,” Graham said. “We’ve tried economic sanctions, which . . . have had almost no effect on Noriega and the people who keep him in power.”

Mack added: “One of the mistakes we made last year . . . was taking the use of military force off the table.”

But Linda Robinson, associate editor of the quarterly Foreign Affairs and an expert on Central America, said that military action seems to be “out of the question.”

“I don’t see Bush going for that,” Robinson said. “The Bush Administration waited a long time even to discuss the subject. We all knew this election was coming, but it was only in the last few weeks that the Administration began to talk about fraud.”

She said that a high-profile failure to oust Noriega, after the Reagan Administration’s unsuccessful attempt last year, would cause severe damage to U.S. interests.

“If they are going to try again, they should succeed this time,” she said.

In addition to possible military action, Bush Administration officials have said that the United States could take legal action to seize Noriega’s personal assets--perhaps totaling hundreds of millions of dollars--in the United States and Europe. The officials said that another possibility is a strict trade embargo against Panama.

But economic sanctions imposed last year have not worked very well, and it seems likely that Noriega long ago pulled his money out of banks and other investments that could be reached by American courts.

Take to OAS

Elliott Abrams, the Reagan Administration’s top Latin America policy-maker, called on President Bush to take the Panamanian election to the Organization of American States.

“We have just seen free elections in the last few months in Chile, Paraguay and Bolivia,” Abrams said. “The Panamanian election fraud is a rarity in Latin America these days. It would seem to me to be useful to take this to the OAS to isolate Noriega more within Latin America.”

So far, the focus has been on Noriega. However, C. William Maynes, editor of Foreign Policy magazine, said that the problem goes deeper than that.

“The problem is the role of a small military circle down there,” Maynes said. “If and when Noriega goes, the United States will be faced with a similar problem. His successor is likely to look very much like Noriega.”