Noriega Promised Freedom to Rebels : Dictator Begins Drive to Oust Foes in Regime

Panamanian dictator Manuel A. Noriega announced a sweeping crackdown against his foes inside the government Thursday, two days after surviving a coup attempt by junior military officers.

Speaking in a defiant and angry tone before 2,700 cheering supporters, the general railed against enemies in the Panama Defense Forces, the political opposition, the civil service, the state-controlled broadcast media and the Bush Administration, which he again accused of abetting the revolt.

“Panama has to live in a moment of emergency, and that emergency means that here there will be no room for traitors,” he told a crowded school auditorium in Santiago, a rice-growing center in southwest Panama. “How can we have a democracy when we’re under so much pressure?”

Opposition Aides Seized

As Noriega spoke, security forces in the capital surrounded the Authentic Liberal Party headquarters and arrested two aides to Guillermo Endara, the opposition leader who was fasting inside to protest the annulment of the May 7 presidential election that international observers said he won.

The raid, in which one shot was fired into the air, sent opposition leaders who had come out of hiding Thursday back to a semi-clandestine existence.

In an unusual maneuver that may indicate lingering internal conflict, about 20 Defense Forces troops wearing camouflage fatigues and black greasepaint surrounded offices of the National Intelligence Directorate, Noriega’s investigative police force. The helmeted troopers carried M-16 and AK-47 rifles and tear gas canisters.

A Defense Forces spokesman said the troopers’ presence was justified but did not explain why. “We did have an emergency situation the day before yesterday,” he said.

Foreign diplomats said there were unconfirmed reports of new arrests of soldiers involved in the five-hour seizure of Noriega’s downtown headquarters, as well as purges of suspected rebel sympathizers from public ministries.

The Ministry of Health, where cheering was heard in the halls during Tuesday’s uprising, fired some of its employees, one diplomat said.

While Noriega’s speech warned of action against a wide range of adversaries, it was most specific in its reference to disloyal employees of the state.

“We have to make a package of emergency war laws,” he declared. “We must abolish those laws that protect the enemy within the government.”

Strongman’s Thanks

Thanking those who backed him during the uprising, Noriega added: “In the name of the functionaries who acted with dignity, we have to throw out those who did not. We have to throw them out to create vacancies for people who do not have jobs.”

He urged each civil servant to act as a “prosecutor” and inform on disloyal co-workers. “We are going to make a list, because there are many people outside the government who need to be included.”

Teachers, he said, will be watched closely because “they are the most vicious and traitorous.” Without naming them, he said some state-controlled radio and television stations were bribed by the coup plotters to broadcast their communique and will be closed.

The 51-year-old general, wearing tropical mufti and a floppy white hat, threw daisies into the crowd of supporters, who waved Panamanian flags and chanted “People power!”

A diplomat said that Noriega had asked his aides for a list of people who called to congratulate him after the uprising, along with the time that each called.

Arrests Reported

The government has reported arresting three members of Noriega’s general staff and 34 soldiers since the coup attempt, in which it said 10 rebels died. Civilian opposition leaders said they believed the death toll was at least three times that figure.

In his first extensive comments on the coup attempt, Noriega did not say why his intelligence chief and two other top aides were among those arrested.

While acknowledging that he was in his downtown headquarters when the company assigned to guard it started the revolt, he offered few details of what happened there, leaving it unclear whether he was ever in the rebels’ hands.

At one point, he said that he told the rebels, who demanded his removal as Defense Forces commander in chief: “You are going to have to kill me first.” Then, warning them that loyalist forces were moving in, he recalled saying: “Not even the death of the commander can stop this movement.”

Noriega said the rebels were backed by the United States “with its money, its bribes and its advice” in what ended as “another Bay of Pigs.”

Noriega’s Accusations

He repeated his government claim that the U.S. Southern Command, from bases near his headquarters, blocked access roads with tanks three hours before the uprising. And, in a new accusation, he said that U.S. Cobra attack helicopters tried unsuccessfully to turn back Panamanian air force jets flown by loyalist pilots toward the besieged headquarters.

Brushing off Washington’s denials, he said: “Don’t be hypocritical. The North Americans were involved in this coup.”

He said American officials were on the phone to opposition leaders during the coup attempt “to divide up the new government.”

Opposition activists denied knowing in advance about the coup. They said they believed the plotters were interested only in changing the military high command and apparently did not share their goal of restoring a democracy and civilian supremacy.

Even so, they expressed a belief that the coup attempt had furthered their goals by weakening Noriega’s grip on the 14,000-member Defense Forces.

“They are in their moment of greatest weakness and disintegration,” said opposition spokesman Ricardo Arias Calderon. “It may take weeks to sort out the consequences of this crisis, which are still unpredictable.”

Arias, who was one of Endara’s running mates in the May election, said he has been telephoning Latin American leaders to urge them to take stronger action against Panama in upcoming regional forums. Such diplomatic pressure has been weak and ineffective so far.

The two men spoke to dozens of reporters in Endara’s party headquarters after hiding since the coup attempt to avoid death threats by pro-Noriega radio commentators.

Endara was in the 16th day of a hunger strike to promote an opposition-led tax revolt to cut the government’s funds. Taking only water and vitamin pills, the portly, double-chinned politician said he had lost 230 pounds and now weighed 245.

About an hour after the press conference ended, riot police appeared in the street outside while plainclothes intelligence agents entered the party headquarters. They nabbed Carlos Bares, an unarmed bodyguard, and Melvin Ceballos, a press agent for the party, witnesses said.

The police then sealed off the building for two hours, barring anyone from leaving or entering.

“They always want to intimidate the Panamanian people,” Endara said. “One of the reasons they did this was to intimidate not only me but the whole population.”