PANAMA: THE ROAD TO RECOVERY : Vatican Confers With U.S. on Fate of Noriega : Diplomacy: The Pope will have to decide, but he makes no mention of the dictator in his address.

Treading lightly in a mine field of conflicting law and sentiment, the Vatican opened talks with the United States here Monday on the fate of ousted Panamanian dictator Manuel A. Noriega.

The meetings were unannounced, but Vatican sources said diplomats from the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See twice visited the Vatican to confer with prelates at the secretariat of state.

One source delicately described the meetings as “transmissions of information,” but another said that the United States was demanding that the Vatican turn over the ousted strongman to face drug-trafficking charges in Florida. The Vatican had taken no decision at day’s end, the sources agreed.

As a matter of practice, questions of international resonance affecting the Vatican are decided personally by Pope John Paul II, who heard the news of Noriega’s asylum request while preparing for midnight Mass Sunday. He made no mention of Panama in his Mass homily Sunday, or in his traditional Monday noon Christmas address at St. Peter’s.

Noriega sought refuge in the Vatican’s embassy in Panama City on Sunday, five days after the United States invaded Panama to arrest him.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro said Monday that Noriega had been accepted at the embassy after he expressed “the will to end the conflict.” Refuge had been granted, he said, in the interests of ending bloodshed.

In a 20-minute meeting with reporters Monday, Navarro stressed that the Vatican had not acceded to Noriega’s request for political asylum but that his legal status had not been decided.

Asked after his news conference by an Italian television reporter if a quick, direct transfer of Noriega to the United States seemed possible, Navarro replied:

“Well, I don’t think so. There isn’t any extradition treaty or anything,” he said, stressing that no decision would be taken until after Vatican diplomats had conferred with “concerned parties.”

First among such parties, Navarro said, would be the new Panamanian government of President Guillermo Endara, who himself was sheltered for a month in the Vatican embassy last spring after winning an election that Noriega annulled. Unspoken but understood in Navarro’s remarks is the key role of the United States.

Privately, Vatican officials make no secret of their repugnance for Noriega. His dictatorship was the sort of rule that Pope John Paul II regularly inveighs against, one official noted.

The Panamanian church has historically been one of the strongest opponents--and a frequent target--of the military dictatorships that have marked Panamanian national life for most of the past two decades.

Vatican diplomats, however, noted that diplomatic asylum is an important international principle, particularly in Latin America, where it has traditionally proved an effective means of averting the sort of reprisals following political tumult that saw the execution Monday of deposed Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

Navarro said the Vatican would weigh “humanitarian, juridical and political” considerations in making its decision.

If it found that Noriega had no case for political asylum and was being justly pursued for criminal offenses, the Vatican could hand him over to the Endara government if it guaranteed his safety, one official said.

Alternatively, if he was granted asylum, the Vatican could arrange a safe conduct for Noriega to a third country. Spain, Cuba and the Dominican Republic were all being considered in Panama on Monday, officials here noted.

Vatican sources said the papal nuncio in Panama City had agreed to give Noriega refuge only after he had promised to abandon all resistance. Navarro would not comment on the circumstances surrounding Noriega’s arrival at the embassy, but he rejected one reporter’s suggestion that the Vatican had been “embarrassed” by his choice.

Rather, said Navarro, the question was whether the Vatican, by accepting Noriega, “could contribute in some way to the pacification of the country, to end the violence.”

Vatican discomfit at Noriega’s surprise visit was all behind closed doors. Officially, the mood was upbeat.

“I can announce with satisfaction that the conflict in Panama seems to be nearing a solution without further shedding of blood. And this is good news for Christmas Day,” Navarro said in a written statement promising quick contacts “between the concerned parties to examine the personal case of Gen. Noriega in all its aspects.”

In the United States, Catholic theologians rallied behind the Vatican, saying they believe the church has a strong position and will be able to hammer out a deal to relocate Noriega.

“I believe the Vatican will support the government of Panama and other Latin American governments by trying to negotiate some type of exile for Noriega,” said Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony. “The Vatican will be looking at a solution with a humanitarian reference rather than a legal reference.”

William Ryan, a spokesman in Washington for the U.S. Catholic Conference, said the church had no choice but to afford Noriega protection in the embassy.

“That’s a tradition that goes back to the Middle Ages,” he said. “The church is a place people would go to when they can go nowhere else.”

Moreover, he said, Noriega’s request for a safe haven was “thrust on the church. . . . If they refused (to take him), they would be on dangerous grounds as far as the international diplomatic community is concerned.” If the church starts picking and choosing between whom it will take in, it could be attacked for sheltered individual refugees in the future.

Legalistic issues aside, it also would be difficult for the church to reject Noriega because accepting him apparently could help end the bloodshed in the nation--an important aim of the church.

“The church always wants to put an end to fighting,” said Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and research fellow at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center in Washington. To the church, he said, “putting people in jail is a secondary consideration.”

Reese said he believes talks on Noriega’s fate could take weeks.

“A lot of different things are involved here,” he said. “I think the Vatican will sit tight for awhile and try to find something that will keep everyone happy. That’s going to be very difficult to do.

“I’m sure the Vatican doesn’t want to keep him,” he added. “They’d like to get rid of him as soon as possible. But they have to do it in a way that doesn’t set a precedent” by surrendering him to hostile authorities.

Times staff writer Ronald L. Soble in Washington contributed to this story.