U.S. Aides, Vatican Negotiate on Noriega : Panama: ‘We want him. Period,’ a White House official declares. The outcome is far from clear.

Bush Administration officials spent Christmas Day in tense, behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Vatican over the fate of ousted dictator Manuel A. Noriega, now a refugee in the papal embassy in Panama, but insisted that they are determined to bring him to trial on drug charges.

“We want him. Period,” declared one White House official, a day after Noriega slipped into the diplomatically protected embassy compound and requested political asylum. “The only deal we want is that we get him physically. Prosecute him. The whole thing. Nobody’s talking deals that I know of.”

While the Administration was pressing a hard line on bringing Noriega to justice, it was far from clear how they would do it. As long as the military leader, whose government was toppled by a U.S. military invasion force Wednesday, remains on diplomatically protected embassy grounds, authorities cannot move in to seize him. And the Vatican embassy, which has a long history of protecting those seeking refuge, indicated that it will not turn him over.

“The U.S. military did its job,” Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said Monday at a news conference in Panama City after a visit with U.S. troops. “They ran Mr. Noriega to ground. At this point, the diplomats and lawyers will take over.”

On Sunday, Noriega, who had been a fugitive for five days, drove unannounced to the seaside Vatican embassy and asked for sanctuary while political asylum was arranged in either Spain or Cuba. Madrid has indicated it would honor its extradition treaty with the United States, while Havana says it would grant Noriega asylum.

Late Sunday, a U.S. official in Panama City indicated that the United States was willing to accept permanent exile in another country for Noriega because it would have him both out of power and out of Panama.

Nonetheless, by Monday, American officials were putting out the tougher line, apparently after a cable sent overnight from Washington to the U.S. Embassy in Panama ordered the shift in direction and tone.

On Monday, a U.S. diplomatic team in Washington was conducting cross-continent negotiations by phone and through U.S. representatives to the Vatican in Rome. One Administration official said his colleagues were “deep in discussions” late Monday and were rejecting any passage for Noriega to asylum in a third country.

President Bush and his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, conferred about the U.S. position at Camp David, Md., the presidential retreat where Bush spent the Christmas weekend, the White House said.

The negotiators are “telling the Vatican that Noriega is an inappropriate subject for temporary refuge, and he must be removed from the embassy and turned over,” the official said. “We’re not asking for him to be extradited. We’re only asking that they not provide sanctuary.”

Although sanctuary might be justified for political prisoners, it is not for criminals, U.S. officials asserted, citing Noriega’s pending 1988 indictment in Florida on drug-trafficking charges.

U.S. Position

One State Department official questioned whether the Administration’s hard-line position will hold up.

“While a lot of people at Justice and some at State want to see him brought back here for trial, I don’t think it’s the view (of senior officials at the State Department) that that’s the only acceptable outcome,” he said.

Referring to secret negotiations between Noriega and the Administration as recently as October on a deal for him to leave power, the official said, “Given that other possibilities were explored in the past, (voluntary exile) is probably still open.”

Also skeptical was a senior government official who said a trial could be “a real aggravation for the United States,” in view of Noriega’s former service as an informant for U.S. intelligence agencies. The Vatican will be in no hurry to make a decision in the case and may eventually arrange for him to go to a third country, he said, adding, “Cuba is a possibility.”

Most agreed that, with highly sensitive issues at stake for both sides, no resolution seemed likely soon.

“This problem will be with us for awhile,” one government source said. Added another official: “There’s not going to be any clean solution to this.”

The makings of the stalemate were put in place by the failure of the U.S. invasion force to capture Noriega when it stormed his military headquarters and Panama Defense Forces installations in multipronged attacks early Wednesday. The canny general managed to stay one step ahead of pursuing special forces teams until he appeared at the Vatican embassy on Christmas Eve.

Since then, U.S. troops have remained on guard outside the nunciature, preventing Noriega from leaving.

At the Vatican, spokesman Joaquin Navarro said that “the concerned parties” would examine the case as soon as possible and that Noriega’s legal status was still being determined. Asked in a television interview whether a “simple” surrender of Noriega to the United States was foreseeable, he replied: “Well, I don’t think so. There isn’t an extradition treaty or anything.”

A Bush Administration official, speaking privately, said the Vatican was being “very legalistic . . . very responsive and responsible.”

“They’re dealing with the case on the merits, but they take their law seriously at the Vatican,” he said. “The whole issue is whether they should allow the embassy to be used this way. Clearly, it should not. He (Noriega) is not a person being persecuted for religious or political beliefs.

“We’re using all channels, but the issue will ultimately be decided by the Vatican in Rome,” he said, adding that U.S. government legal advisers were marshaling all the arguments they could find to persuade the Vatican to turn Noriega out of the embassy.

One official said he thought more productive discussions might be possible today, with the holiday over. “You don’t want to push the Vatican too hard on Christmas Day,” he said.

U.S. officials said they were concerned that making a deal to allow Noriega to become an exile in another country would cause serious repercussions both in the United States and in Panama.

Accommodating a notorious international drug defendant could cause a hot political backlash.

“A lot of us realize trying him could be an aggravation, but an even worse aggravation would be if we somehow were involved in his not coming to the United States for trial,” one official said. “We would never be forgiven for that.”

In addition, a free Noriega could provide inspiration to his loyalists in Panama to fight on. “Until Noriega is brought to justice, some of his supporters will assume that the great man will come back,” said one source.

One possible compromise could involve releasing him to the custody of the new Panamanian government of Guillermo Endara. Under the Panamanian constitution, he then could not be extradited to the United States.

Few Options

But, even if negotiations became flexible, options for relocating Noriega appear limited, officials said.

Spain and the Dominican Republic--cited as possible places of exile in previous U.S. talks with Noriega--pose significant problems. On Monday, Spanish Foreign Minister Francisco Fernandez Ordonez said that because of the extradition treaty with the United States, Spain would have to hand Noriega over to U.S. officials if he appeared there. And the Dominican Republic is close enough to Panama to allow Noriega to stir an insurgency.

Raymond Takiff, Noriega’s attorney in Miami, said U.S. authorities should consider that prosecution of the ousted strongman in the United States might threaten national security by resulting in sensitive information being divulged about his long association with the CIA.

Noriega was indicted Feb. 4, 1988, in Miami and Tampa, Fla., on racketeering, drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges.

One senior government official acknowledged that prosecuting Noriega would present the Bush Administration with at last two major problems: a lack of strong evidence that Noriega is guilty as charged and the probability that he would demand secret CIA documents to defend himself.

“We’ve never paid enough attention to the evidence in the case,” the official said. “We don’t have any doubt about his guilt. But convicting him in the media is one thing and convicting him in a court of law is another. Another troublesome thing is he would use the old CIA defense and probably could hit on something they couldn’t produce.”

Meanwhile, Panamanian Lt. Col. Luis A. del Cid surrendered to authorities in Panama on Monday and was put on a plane bound for Miami, where he will be arraigned on cocaine-smuggling charges, said David Runkel, chief spokesman for Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh.

Del Cid is the first of five top aides to Noriega to be taken into custody on the federal drug-smuggling charges filed in Florida against Noriega and 16 associates.

Del Cid, commander of the 1,000-man 5th Military Region in Panama, was Noriega’s personal secretary for more than a decade.

Times staff writers Kenneth Freed, in Panama City, and John M. Broder, Doyle McManus and Robin Wright, in Washington, contributed to this story.

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