Panama: The Road to Recovery : Endara Demands That Vatican Tell Noriega to Leave : Refuge: President says the general’s crimes are not political. The papal envoy has not yet responded.

Panamanian President Guillermo Endara demanded Wednesday that the Vatican revoke the sanctuary given former dictator Manuel A. Noriega in the papal embassy here and “tell him to leave.”

“We believe Gen. Noriega’s crimes are not political,” Endara said at a news conference. “He is a common criminal of the worst kind--homicide and narco-trafficking. I feel the nuncio (Vatican envoy Jose Sebastian Laboa) should in the very near future ask the deposed dictator to leave.”

The emissary here of Pope John Paul II did not respond to Endara’s call, and diplomats familiar with the Vatican ambassador’s thinking said it is unlikely that there will be any change in Rome’s stance.

Noriega entered the Vatican embassy Sunday and asked for sanctuary while political asylum was arranged in another country. On Dec. 20, he was driven from power by invading U.S. troops after eight years of increasingly brutal rule. The Pope authorized the protection and has pledged not to give up Noriega to the United States, which has indicted him on charges of narcotics trafficking and money laundering.

While Endara was calling on Laboa to send Noriega into the streets, American soldiers waiting outside increased what the U.S. military believes is psychological pressure on both the ambassador and the general.

Razor-sharp barbed wire was run right to the top of the wall surrounding the seaside embassy building. Powerful spotlights flooded the courtyard with blinding light. And rock music blared incessantly throughout the day from military loudspeakers.

“The idea is to make him aware that we are out here,” said a U.S. Army major standing next to the Vatican mission.

“And to make him and his hosts nervous?” a reporter asked.

“That, too,” the major replied.

However, there was another, more prosaic reason for the concert--to make it more difficult for American television technicians to listen in on military radio transmissions with long-range, sensitive microphones.

Embassy Blockade

Throughout the day, during which American military roadblocks and patrols created traffic jams rivaling those on the San Diego Freeway, high-ranking U.S. officers, including Gen. Maxwell Thurman, shuttled in and out of the cordon of tanks and barbed wire blockading the embassy.

According to U.S. sources, Thurman was trying to persuade some of the other 30 Panamanians who are in the Vatican mission with Noriega to abandon their former “maximum leader” and to make him feel so alone that he will give up in desperation.

And, at least to some degree, the tactic is working, these sources said. They asserted that three senior military supporters of Noriega have walked out of the embassy and surrendered to American soldiers, although this could not be independently confirmed.

Endara’s statement--the first by the government concerning Noriega since he fled into the mission--did add pressure on the Roman Catholic Church to withdraw its protection of the deposed strongman. But it did not reflect any new decision by the Panamanian government to supersede the United States.

“We are not negotiating” with either the Vatican or the United States, Endara said.

“No, no way,” said Vice President Guillermo (Billy) Ford when asked if his government was changing its position to leave Noriega to the United States. “We don’t want him. You (Americans) can have the S.O.B.”

No Criminal Charges

He pointed out that no Panamanian criminal charges have been filed against Noriega and nothing has happened to change his government’s position from that expressed Sunday, when Endara told reporters that he had “other priorities” than searching for Noriega.

“There’s no change. . . . We’re leaving him to the United States,” Ford said. “Endara was only saying that Noriega should be sent out, that no one should give him sanctuary.”

Other government sources said the United States is pressuring Endara to actively seek custody of Noriega because American experts have developed a way to overcome the Panamanian constitution’s prohibition against extraditing any citizen to another country.

Under this new theory, the original 1904 treaty establishing relations between the United States and Panama permitted extradition. This provision was carried over by the 1977 treaties that redefined the ownership and operation of the Panama Canal.

Therefore, under some interpretations of international law, extradition would be permitted because full treaties between nations are equal to, or in some cases supersede, national constitutions.

Endara said he was unaware of the 1904 treaty provision and had ordered legal experts to study the matter.

In the meantime, the president, who wore his official sash of office in public for the first time Wednesday, indicated he was putting the Noriega affair on the bottom of his list of things to worry about.

“If he comes out, we will decide what to do then,” Endara told reporters.

In other developments, he announced that the National Election Commission had reversed its position taken last May that elections overwhelmingly won by an Endara-led coalition had been nullified.

Therefore, he said, his government was the fully legitimate and elected representative of the people’s will.