Combat In Panama : ‘Weeks, Months’ of Duty Ahead for Troops, Bush Aides Concede : Military plan: The defense force had to be neutralized. But filling its many jobs, from customs to police, will be a hard task for the new regime.

With American casualties still rising as fighting in Panama swept into its fourth day, the Bush Administration conceded Saturday that the U.S. invasion force faces “weeks and months” of duty in the battle-scarred country.

The failure to capture Manuel A. Noriega, the ousted Panamanian dictator, and to get the new U.S.-installed government of Guillermo Endara fully organized and functional have grown into severe problems for the U.S. military operation, Administration officials said.

In retrospect, said one official, not catching the elusive strongman “was the biggest single downside of the whole operation” because he now is either directing or inspiring the resistance of well-armed loyalists--his so-called Dignity Battalions.

“We’ll be involved there for weeks or months one way or the other,” a senior Bush aide declared. “A lot of it depends on how fast Endara puts his government and police force together. But he’s starting from scratch, so it could be a long time.”

Stiffer Resistance

Although U.S. Army commanders in Panama have described the resistance of Noriega’s forces as much stiffer than they had anticipated, the White House says the fighting has developed almost exactly as senior Pentagon officers predicted in their pre-invasion briefing for President Bush.

“All of us find it almost unbelievable that it’s going just about as described,” White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said in an interview.

Fitzwater said Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “laid out the military plan last Sunday and said the first few days of the operation would be the easiest part, that some time after that would be required to restore law and order, that there were risks of hostages and roving bands of Dignity (Battalion) people, and there would be a lot of violence and trouble getting snipers under control. So the President knew all that when he made the decision.”

Until shortly before the invasion, Bush attempted to separate Noriega from the 15,000-member Panama Defense Forces, saying the United States had no animosity toward the PDF and that Washington’s quarrel was with Noriega alone.

However, a senior Bush aide said Saturday that the President recognized from the outset that it would be necessary to scatter or neutralize the PDF. Military briefers told Bush “there was no way you could get Endara established if you couldn’t first destroy the Panamanian infrastructure,” the aide said.

Now, the rebuilding of the PDF is one of the most critical challenges facing Endara and the United States because the defense force is a principal component of the country’s infrastructure. It is responsible for customs, immigration, airports, seaports and all police protection, as well as defense.

‘Not a Quick Process’

Fitzwater, acknowledging that recruiting and training qualified people to reconstitute the PDF “will not be a quick process,” said: “There is a tendency in this television age to think things happen in a day or two, but they don’t.”

In Panama, Gen. Maxwell R. Thurman, head of the U.S. Southern Command, said Saturday that “significant progress” had been made in subduing the organized remnants of the PDF but that the irregulars of the Dignity Battalions still pose a problem.

On Friday, Thurman had told reporters that his forces were waging “a real war” against about 2,000 “centrally directed” and well-armed Noriega loyalists. Only a day earlier, Bush had said that, except for the continuing search for Noriega, the military operation was “pretty well wrapped up.”

Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who supported the invasion, said Saturday that he believes the military operation has gone well but that not enough political planning had been done.

“I’m disturbed that I don’t see a lot of support of the Endara government, and that’s got to be troublesome,” he said.

In an interview with CNN, Aspin suggested that U.S. forces face a protracted stay in Panama because an early pullout would leave the country in chaos. On the other hand, he said, the longer U.S. troops remain there the more they undermine the Endara government because it will look like a creature of the United States.

Despite an American toll of at least 27 deaths and 238 injuries--and a much larger casualty list for Panamanians--as well as extensive destruction in the capital city of the tiny country, the White House described Bush as pleased with the way the operation has gone.

“He’s somber about it all, but feels pretty good about the military side and pleased it’s going the way the military laid it out,” Fitzwater said. “You can’t minimize casualties, but we think there has been a small amount for the size of the operation.”

About 22,500 U.S. troops took part in the assault, and about 3,000 additional service personnel have been assigned to Panama since then, including 2,000 fresh troops ordered into Panama on Friday.

When Bush made his decision last Sunday to order the massive incursion, Fitzwater said, his feeling was that “by going in with maximum force in the beginning and taking out the Panamanian Defense Forces, you would have a lot less casualties than if you were to just go in and try to capture Noriega.”

Meantime, three more bodies of American servicemen killed in Panama arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. In all, 21 bodies have arrived at Dover, site of the military’s largest mortuary, in C-141 transport planes for processing before being shipped to the soldiers’ hometowns for burial.

Bush and his family spent the holiday weekend at nearby Camp David, Md. The President, who has told White House staffers and other Administration officials not to let the Panama situation interfere with their Christmas holiday arrangements, has no plans to interrupt his own scheduled 10-day vacation.

Vice President Dan Quayle is skiing in Vail, Colo., and Secretary of State James A. Baker III is hunting in Texas.

Bush and his wife, Barbara, are being joined by their five children and 11 grandchildren for the Christmas holidays during their stay at Camp David.

Fitzwater said that while the President has adopted a “business as usual” attitude, he will visit the Defense Department here briefly today to deliver an annual Christmas message for service personnel over the Armed Forces Radio Network.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, apparently the only top national security official remaining on duty over the holiday weekend, will brief Bush on the latest developments in Panama when the President travels to the Pentagon for the radio address.

Except for daily national security briefings and a New Year’s Eve trip to a military hospital at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio to visit soldiers wounded in Panama, Bush’s holiday schedule includes no official functions.

He plans to fly to Beeville, Tex., on Wednesday for a visit at the ranch of Will Farish, his longtime friend, and engage in some hunting and fishing.

Fitzwater said Bush also still plans to attend a drug summit in Colombia in February despite Peru’s declaration that it will boycott the meeting and stop cooperating with the United States in its anti-drug war as a protest against the U.S. action in Panama.

Bolivia, which like Peru is a major source of cocaine traffic, is the only other country besides Colombia and the United States now scheduled to attend the summit.

“The drug summit is still on and the President intends to go whether Peru is there or not,” Fitzwater said. “But we’ve always said we’d be flexible right up until the time of the summit.”

Both Bolivia and Colombia, voting with a 20-1 majority in the Organization of American States, also have condemned the U.S. invasion.

Fitzwater said the Bush Administration had anticipated that in Latin America “the initial reaction” to the invasion would be negative, but he pointed out that Bush and Quayle have personally called most of the Latin American leaders, “and privately most of them tell us that because of their nonintervention policy they had to publicly condemn us. But privately, they said they didn’t like Noriega and understood our doing what we did.”

Lack of Recognition

Although none of the Latin American countries have recognized the Endara government, which was installed at a U.S. military base in Panama, Fitzwater said, “we expect they will eventually recognize it.”

So far the Endara government has been recognized only by two large countries--the United States and Britain--and two tiny ones--Luxembourg and Dominica.

Staff writer Don Shannon, at the United Nations, contributed to this story.