U.S. Presses Noriega Question on 2 Fronts : Panama: Administration seeks to get him from Vatican embassy and freeze his foreign bank accounts.

The Bush Administration, in a two-pronged approach to the sticky question of Manuel A. Noriega’s fate, said Tuesday that it is working through diplomatic channels to gain custody of the deposed Panamanian dictator and through legal channels to freeze his foreign bank accounts, which it believes may contain as much as $10 million.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III called Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, secretary of state at the Vatican, on Christmas morning to insist that Noriega has no legitimate claim for refuge. The U.S. ambassador at the Vatican, Thomas Miledy, also sent a follow-up message to the Vatican on Tuesday.

“It was not a nasty message,” said a senior Bush Administration official. “It was a strong, legal, principled presentation respecting the tradition of the Vatican on giving humanitarian refuge, but pointing out it was inappropriate in Noriega’s case.”

Noriega has been at the Vatican’s embassy in Panama City since Christmas Eve, when he sought sanctuary there from the U.S. force that invaded Panama and ousted him last week.

Privately, several officials familiar with the negotiations conceded that there is some flexibility in the Administration’s position and that Noriega, with the Vatican’s help, may wind up being granted asylum in a third country.

An Administration legal expert said that both the Vatican and the United States are struggling with complex legal questions. “It may take, at minimum, a few weeks to resolve the situation,” he said.

“Both sides are taking it one step at a time. Both are looking at the operative laws (in the United States, Panama and the Vatican), as well as international laws,” he added. “That still doesn’t address the political questions. It’s a mess.”

While the diplomatic discussions may be long and drawn out, the Justice Department is moving quickly to seize Noriega’s assets. It announced Tuesday that it will file legal papers today in at least six foreign countries seeking to freeze specific bank accounts that the United States believes belong to Noriega.

The action is being taken under mutual assistance treaties between the United States and the other countries that provide for cooperation if specific assets can be shown to represent the proceeds of criminal activities. The United States contends that Noriega’s bank accounts contain money from illegal drug trafficking.

The discussions concerning Noriega’s status, according to White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater, are being carried out “through established diplomatic channels with all parties involved,” including Vatican authorities and the new Panamanian government headed by Guillermo Endara.

“We want to get Noriega back,” Fitzwater told reporters. “That’s still our objective. We went in for that purpose, and that purpose remains the same.”

President Bush earlier had declared that Noriega’s capture and trial on 2-year-old federal drug trafficking charges was a major objective of the U.S. military operation in Panama.

A government official familiar with the diplomatic negotiations said he would not rule out Noriega’s eventually being granted refuge in a third country. But he said that Cuba, which has indicated a willingness to grant asylum, “would be an extremely dangerous place for him to be, because that could represent a threat to the security of Panama, and that would be an absurd result.”

Agreeing with that assessment, a senior State Department official said: “To let him go to Cuba would just plant him in a place where he can get on the radio and incite trouble in Panama, the same way he did last week.”

Another knowledgeable State Department official said: “Officially, the position is still that we want to try him here, but that presents all sorts of other problems.”

Senior U.S. officials, he said, are discussing “to what extent we’re willing to bend” but have not reached a final decision.

“We are not flexible about a third country,” the Administration legal expert said. “The President has made clear that he wants Noriega to be brought back here. Yes, there are fallbacks. We have to be realistic, but we have an awful lot of leverage or cards in the final resolution.”

Still another State Department official said that, while the Administration is pressing energetically for Noriega to be turned over, officials acknowledge that they may have to accept his release to a third country.

“If there’s a way to get him, we really do want him,” the official said. “But we don’t want him hanging around in Panama. . . . The best thing for (the Endara government) would be to get him out of Panama.”

Other sources have suggested that the Administration is not eager to try Noriega because a trial could embarrass the United States and perhaps Bush personally. Noriega worked closely with the CIA for many years, including in 1976, when Bush was CIA director, and in the 1980s, when he was vice president.

A senior government official familiar with the case also has questioned whether the evidence against Noriega is strong enough to support a conviction. That question was emphasized Tuesday by Jeffrey Swartz, a criminal attorney who represents drug defendants in Miami, where one of two federal indictments was returned against Noriega.

“The general opinion in the criminal defense community in Miami,” said Swartz, who is familiar with the Noriega case, “is that this is probably not the strongest evidentiary case the U.S. has, either from the standpoint of quality of witnesses or the documentary evidence.”

Swartz said he and other Miami criminal lawyers believe the government’s best chance to convict Noriega, if he is ever brought to trial, will be to “flip” some of 10 fellow defendants in the case, including four Panamanians, and get them to testify against him in return for promises of leniency.

One defendant, Luis A. del Cid, a top Noriega aide, appeared in federal court in Miami on Tuesday, pleaded innocent to drug trafficking charges and asked for a jury trial. At a news conference, Dexter Lehtinen, U.S. attorney for south Florida, said he has a solid case against Del Cid and is confident he can win a conviction of him and the other defendants, including Noriega.

A State Department official familiar with the case agreed that the government can develop enough evidence to convict Noriega. He suggested that Del Cid, who faces charges that carry penalties of up to 70 years in prison, “is probably going to turn state’s evidence.”

“If he knows anything about Noriega, as we believe he does, then he is going to talk,” the official said.

Del Cid, a lieutenant colonel in the Panama Defense Forces, was arrested by U.S. Drug Enforcement agents Monday after surrendering to U.S. troops. Panama does not have an extradition treaty with the United States, but because Del Cid surrendered, DEA agents were able to whisk him immediately by plane to Miami to face the drug charges.

The Justice Department’s action to freeze Noriega’s bank accounts was announced by department spokesman David Runkel, who said specific bank accounts will be identified in legal papers filed in at least six countries. He declined to name the countries and said that the United States is uncertain how much money is in the accounts.

When Noriega was indicted last year by federal grand juries in Miami and Tampa, Fla., he was charged with converting at least $10 million to his own use from illegal drug activities. The Justice Department believes that “money which has been spirited out of Panama is in these accounts,” Runkel said.

Clues to Noriega’s foreign accounts were found last week among personal papers taken from his office in the Panama Defense Forces compound by U.S. troops.

Times staff writers James Gerstenzang, Doyle McManus, Robin Wright, Robert L. Jackson and John M. Broder contributed to this story.

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NORIEGA EXHAUSTED:Dictator “could barely speak” when he got asylum. A5