COMBAT IN PANAMA : POWs Facing Evaluation of Their Loyalty : Detention: U.S. seeks to sort committed enemies from allies. At stake may be future civil order.

The fate of captured members of Gen. Manuel A. Noriega’s army may be determined largely at U.S. bases like this one, where prisoners bound in plastic handcuffs waited in the tropical sun Friday afternoon to face military judgment.

The newly captured Panamanians stepped before their interrogators one by one to be quizzed about past wrongs and intentions for the future in a new life in the conqueror’s regime.

The 16 prisoners who lined up along the Panama Canal were among an estimated 1,500 Panamanians held by the United States in the aftermath of the invasion. The United States is seeking to sort out committed enemies from potential allies in the Panama Defense Forces, whose survival is deemed essential to a new Panama.

“You bet your boots they were hostile,” Gen. Maxwell Thurman, the Southern Forces commander, acknowledged of the PDF on Friday afternoon.

But even as forces still aligned with Noriega waged a guerrilla war against U.S. troops in the Panamanian capital, Thurman and other U.S. officials stressed the importance of “rehabilitating” as many vestiges of the PDF as possible to build an army loyal to the new Panamanian government.

The sweaty men in soiled clothes who were brought to this base by truck were not prisoners of war, the U.S. military insisted, but “detainees” not charged with any crime.

In Washington, sources in the Bush Administration said Friday that U.S. authorities are preparing to set up prisoner of war camps where the Panamanian soldiers now in custody can be screened to determine who might help form a new Panamanian army and who might be prosecuted as drug traffickers.

“We are providing POW protection for each one until the precise status of each individual soldier can be ascertained,” one official said.

Although those who could persuade the Navy of their good will were not released, at least five of the 16 who passed through U.S. scrutiny Friday afternoon at Rodman Naval Station won at least the freedom from handcuffs.

It was a first step in a process that might bring them quickly back into active military duty, according to the Navy officer in charge of the operation

Most of the former Defense Forces members processed here since early Wednesday morning have expressed interest in becoming part of a revamped PDF, said Navy Warrant Officer Eugene Richley.

But the 1,500 individuals detained to date represent only a small fraction of the 15,000 PDF members in active duty before the American invasion, and even that percentage likely exaggerates the portion now in U.S. custody, U.S. officials said.

Interrogators have determined that a substantial percentage of the 100 prisoners processed here so far were never PDF members at all but were looters or even innocent refugees.

Further, because the U.S. military has made clear that the path to rehabilitation must--at least for now--proceed through handcuffs and interrogation, the intentions of most of the former Panamanian army remain unclear.

Washington insists that it is the new Panamanian government that is ultimately to determine which of the former PDF members and other Noriega loyalists to embrace.

The task of restructuring the PDF--including rooting out corruption--is among the foremost challenges confronting the Bush Administration. The PDF has served not only as Panama’s army but also as its police force.

“We don’t want to run a camp for a lot of people for a prolonged period. No one wants the U.S. to be seen running a concentration camp,” one Administration source said in Washington. He conceded that the process could take “months and months.”

The source said the soldiers probably will break down into three categories:

“One, there may have been some good soldiers who did nothing. They will be released to the new government as soon as possible.

“Two, if the government believes some are Noriega loyalists, they may be kept for a while.

“The third group are those who may have been involved in the drug business. We have to determine whether we want to bring them back to the U.S. for prosecution or turn them over for prosecution in Panama.”

Among those believed to be in custody are a number of men with close ties to Noriega, four of whom have been indicted in the United States on drug charges along with Noriega, a Justice Department official said.

“Those four clearly are people we want to take custody of, and we will be interviewing others that we have outstanding cases against--people who figure in ongoing investigations,” said David Runkel, a special assistant to U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh.

Times staff writers Robin Wright, Edwin Chen and Robert L. Jackson contributed to this story.