President Doesn’t Rule Out Military Response to Slaying of U.S. Officer

President Bush today called the weekend slaying of an American officer in Panama “an enormous outrage” and said he is reviewing a range of options in response. He pointedly did not rule out military action.

“I think a President, all Presidents, have options, but they don’t discuss what they might be,” Bush said. He repeated the answer when asked if military action was among the options available.

He said the U.S. failure to drive Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega from power in Panama was “an enormous frustration” of his first year in office.

The President made his comments in an Oval Office interview with reporters from the Associated Press and three other news agencies. His remarks followed the shooting Saturday night of a U.S. military officer who was in a car with other Americans trying to flee a crowd of Panamanian troopers and civilians.

Bush’s voice was raspy, showing signs of the laryngitis that forced him to cancel a speechmaking trip to New York last Friday.

On other topics, Bush:

--Defended anew his decision to send two top aides to China to rekindle relations for the first time since the bloody suppression of pro-democracy demonstrators last June. He said he does not know when Chinese dissident Fang Lizhi would be able to leave the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, where he has taken refuge since the crackdown.

--Shrugged off a published report that Colombian drug lords have placed a $30-million price on his head. “There is nothing to it,” he said and added that he is confident the Secret Service could protect him when he attends a regional drug summit in Colombia on Feb. 15.

The Administration was quick to blame Noriega for the weekend violence in Panama. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater today condemned “a climate of aggression” there and said Noriega seems to have granted a “license for harassment” against Americans.

In the interview, Bush said of the fatal shooting of the American officer: “It’s an enormous outrage and a matter of enormous concern to this President.”

He also defended his decision to send the high-level delegation to China 10 days ago, even though Chinese leaders remain unrepentant about the massacre of pro-democracy students.

Speaking of his gesture, he said, “I don’t think it’s a salute” to the hard-line leaders in Beijing. He spoke of it as a decision to end the isolation of a country of more than 1 billion people.

Bush said the criticism of his move was “not a good rap” but that a President has to be willing “to take a little heat from time to time. It hasn’t been that much.”