PANAMA: THE ROAD TO RECOVERY : Noriega Poses Dilemma for Vatican : Asylum: When the ousted strongman turned up at the papal embassy in Panama City, the holiday season grew complicated.

Twice on Monday, traffic police scattered the holiday crowd gathered on the outskirts of St. Peter’s Square for the traditional Christmas blessing from Pope John Paul II--once for the hurrying Cadillac of the U.S. ambassador, once for the Mercedes-Benz of the Vatican secretary of state.

A special day reserved at the Vatican for joyful prayer and priestly fraternity had instead become the domain of diplomats, lawyers and, looming behind them, politicians of half a dozen countries.

Panamanian Manuel A. Noriega was hardly a Christmas visitor the Vatican expected. Now, he may turn out to be like one of those unwanted presents that are difficult to return.

The Vatican spent Christmas Day, 1989, surer why the ousted dictator-on-the-run had come to its embassy in Panama City than where he would go.

Noriega had asked for asylum, and the papal nuncio had agreed to let him enter the embassy as an aid to ending Panama’s bloodshed only after the former strongman had expressed his willingness to end the conflict, the Vatican said. No formal asylum has been granted, but Noriega was free to remain at the embassy while the Vatican consulted with “concerned parties” about him, papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro said.

Enter the black suits and bulging briefcases.

“It’s quite awkward for the poor Vatican, and it raises all sorts of delicate issues of international law. But in a part of the world where the right of asylum is historically accepted and jealously preserved, could the embassy have turned him down?” observed Father Robert Graham, an American Jesuit historian and specialist on Vatican diplomacy.

When Noriega entered the embassy as the Pope was preparing for midnight Mass here, he sought the protective cloak of political practices and diplomatic principles that are ingrained and respected facts of life in Latin America.

In a region where governments have historically been changed more often by bullets than ballots, countries routinely grant asylum in their embassies to politicians on the run.

The practice is codified by an international convention that also is observed in other parts of the world--as it regularly helps to save lives.

Guillermo Endara, the new Panamanian president, spent a month in the same Vatican embassy last spring after Noriega annulled his election.

Fang Lizhi, a dissident wanted by the Chinese authorities, has lived at the American Embassy in Beijing since last summer. The court poet of executed Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu tried--and failed--to take refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest on Monday from a crowd that sought to lynch him. Soldiers arrested him.

What makes Noriega so awkward for the Vatican is that politicians on the lam normally go to embassies of like-minded governments where they know they will be welcome.

Noriega, by contrast, is no friend of the Vatican. His relations with the Panamanian church varied between poor and atrocious. More, he is wanted on criminal--not political--charges by the United States, a “concerned party” with which the Vatican’s relations are excellent.

But, Graham said, “Giving him directly to the United States would be betraying the principle of asylum.”

In the delicate maneuvering that has only just begun, the Vatican also will hear from the Endara government. Presumably, there will be criminal charges for Noriega to face as well in the aftermath of his rule. But reports from Panama on Monday said the Panamanian constitution forbids the extradition of any Panamanian citizen to the United States.

Usual practice in asylum cases is for the ambassador of the embassy that accepts a person seeking asylum to negotiate a safe-conduct that guarantees the right to leave the country. Sometimes, governments refuse permission and political visitors outlast ambassadors as embassy guests. Cardinal Josef Mindszenty spent nearly 15 years in the U.S. Embassy in Budapest, from 1956 to 1971.