U.S. Taking Long View on Panama Crisis

Despite President Bush’s dramatic weekend call for the Panama Defense Forces to overthrow strongman Manuel A. Noriega, the United States now appears to be building a long-term strategy not contingent on either imminent results or unilateral action.

In interviews Sunday, both Bush Administration officials and congressional leaders suggested that the Panama crisis could well drag on for months--and possibly even after the removal of Noriega.

“I think that the steps that the Administration has taken so far need to be given some time to work,” Secretary of State James A. Baker III said on the CBS-TV program “Face the Nation.”

The Administration’s two-pronged approach was underscored by President Bush himself. Saying that he would act “prudently” in Central America, he told a Lexington, Ky., fund-raiser for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.): “I will act as much as we possibly can in concert with the nations of Central and South America. We do not want to return to the days of the imperialistic ‘gringos’ of the north.”

At the same time, however, he kept up the pressure by warning: “Let everybody be clear on one point. I will protect the lives of Americans in Panama, whether they’re military or civilian. We will not let Americans’ lives be put at risk by a dictator down there.”

Yet other U.S. officials played down military options. “We have obligations to protect the (Panama) Canal against sabotage. And we also have an obligation to protect American lives, “ Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger said on ABC’s “This Week with David Brinkley.”

“Now, given what we saw on television last week, with regard to the beatings (of opposition candidates) and so forth, I think we had a perfectly good reason to believe that there was a concern over the American citizens who are there, and that’s why those troops are there,” he said.

The Bush Administration is clearly trying to avoid precipitous action--military or political--in its effort to replace Noriega, whom it has attacked as a tyrant and a front for drug dealers.

Washington is currently sending strong signals that it also does not intend to abrogate the Panama Canal Treaties, under which operational control and defense of the strategic waterway will be assumed exclusively by Panama on Dec. 31, 1999.

“If we abrogate the present (treaties), then we’re going to find ourselves without any legal basis at all for our presence in Panama,” explained one of the treaties’ negotiators, businessman and former diplomat Sol Linowitz, on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), a member of the official U.S. election observer team in Panama who also appeared on “Face the Nation,” added: “I do not believe that we ought to be talking about abrogating the canal treaties. What Noriega wants to do is to make this an issue of the U.S. versus Panama, with our goal being to take back the canal and to abrogate the treaties. We shouldn’t give him that opportunity.”