Noriega Surrenders to U.S. : He Leaves Embassy and Is Flown to Florida for Trial : Panama: ‘All objectives have now been achieved,’ the President says. Standoff ends with ‘the full knowledge’ of the new Panamanian government.

Former Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega was handed over to U.S. authorities in Panama on Wednesday night to face drug charges in American courts, the White House announced. The circumstances of the surrender were not immediately clear.

Noriega had sought refuge in the Vatican embassy in Panama City on Christmas Eve.

President Bush, in a nationally televised appearance from the White House, said that Noriega “turned himself in to U.S. authorities with the full knowledge” of the new Panamanian government.

The President said that Noriega was taken to Howard Air Force Base in Panama, where he was arrested by agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and that he was on his way to Homestead Air Force Base in southern Florida aboard a U.S. Air Force C-130 transport plane.

Bush said that Noriega left the Vatican embassy about 8:50 p.m. Less than an hour elapsed before the former dictator was on his way to the United States.

“He left of his own will. . . . The decision was his and his alone,” Gen. Maxwell Thurman, commander of the U.S. Southern command in Panama City, said at a news conference. Noriega was indicted in February, 1988, on drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges by federal grand juries in Miami and Tampa.

The President pledged that Noriega would be given a “fair trial.”

Bush added that Noriega’s “apprehension and return to the United States should send a clear signal that the United States is serious in its determination that these charges” will be tried in a court of law.

The President said that he had launched the invasion of Panama on Dec. 20 with four goals: to save American lives, to restore democracy in Panama, to protect the integrity of the Panama Canal treaties, which will turn the canal over to the new government of Panama in 10 years, and to remove Noriega from office.

“All of these objectives have now been achieved,” the President said.

The invasion was carried out by nearly 14,000 U.S. troops. Twenty-three American soldiers were killed and more than 300 wounded in the operation.

As of Wednesday, about 1,000 troops had been withdrawn, and the President promised that more would be pulled out as soon as the “local situation would permit.”

Before Noriega’s surrender, the largest public demonstration in 2 1/2 years formed near the Vatican embassy in Panama City to excoriate Noriega and urge the Vatican to force the one-time “maximum leader” out into the streets.

The polite and well-groomed crowd of 10,000 to 20,000 people was stopped by a newly installed chain-link fence erected by the American troops who surrounded the mission. The crowd was kept three blocks from the embassy by American troops.

Although demonstration leaders urged cheers and chants over loudspeakers, most of the crowd stood quietly by, drinking sodas, eating ice cream and enjoying the sun.

The most eloquent and creative symbols of the demonstrators’ sentiments were expressed on the T-shirts many wore. “No More, the Nightmare Is Over,” read the message on many.

A second message read: “Just Force (the code name for the invasion), Not an Invasion, Just Welcome.” And another message read: “Thank U Salvation Army.”

As the well-behaved and widely spaced demonstrators milled in front of the 12-foot-tall fence, about 30 U.S. soldiers in full combat gear and carrying M-16 assault rifles patrolled a few feet away. However, the tanks that normally block the streets near the Vatican embassy had been pulled back a block.

Earlier Wednesday in Panama City, Col. Roberto Armijo, the officer chosen to head a new Panamanian military cleansed of the corruption and brutality that identified the army headed by Noriega, was forced to resign because of “irregularities in his personal finances.”

President Guillermo Endara made the announcement of Armijo’s resignation, which marks his new government’s first crisis, without elaboration. But Vice President Ricardo Arias Calderon said in an interview that Armijo, the highest-ranking officer kept on after the Dec. 20 American invasion, quit because an investigation found signs of serious personal corruption during his nearly 25 years in the Panama Defense Forces.

Armijo had been appointed commander of the newly named and drastically reduced Public Force because he was the highest-ranking officer left after the U.S. military and Endara government officials had culled out leaders of the old Defense Forces thought guilty of corruption, brutality, torture and other serious crimes.

The choice came under private but immediate fire from anti-Noriega leaders, both in and out of the new government, because of charges that no one who held such high positions as Armijo’s--he headed the national police, the navy and was chief of military personnel--could have avoided corruption.

This criticism, along with growing dissatisfaction with the government’s apparent willingness to incorporate other officers and enlisted men of the PDF into the new military structure, led to an investigation of Armijo, according to presidential spokesman Anel Beliz.

Vice President Arias, who is in charge of restructuring the military, said the investigation “found questions about Armijo’s personal finances. We called him on the telephone and said we wanted to discuss his personal finances. He then offered to resign.”

Other sources said the colonel, who was due to retire next summer, was given no choice. Beliz said the question of criminal charges against Armijo is still under consideration.

The undisclosed amount of money that investigators traced to Armijo indicates serious corruption, according to several government officials. They charged that Armijo was involved in smuggling and extortion, for which he allegedly received large payments.

Arias said in the interview that his program for the new military was not involved in the decision to fire the army commander, insisting that “there is no difference in the government over the development of the security force. Personal finances--this is the reason, and the only reason, for the resignation.”

However, other senior members of the government and influential leaders of the three main parties that make up the coalition headed by Endara said the appointment and subsequent disgrace of Armijo are representative of the flaws in Arias’ approach.

“We cannot use either the structure or the members of the PDF to form the new security force,” said one government Cabinet member, who asked for anonymity. “All we need is a small police force.”

Arias plans to rebuild the military to some 8,000 troops and will include counterintelligence, combat and other units normally found in a traditional army.

Even though Armijo’s removal satisfied some critics, particularly those who said the police he once commanded had brutally attacked peaceful opposition groups, his appointed successor is also the subject of serious doubts.

Endara said the new army will be headed by Col. Eduardo Herrera Hassan, a controversial officer who was in and out of Noriega’s favor over the years and who also is charged with brutality in leading security forces against former opposition groups.

“Herrera may be the favorite of the Americans,” said a prominent banker who is a close adviser to the government, “but he was a product of, and member of, a military system that opposes democracy and sees corruption as its natural right.”

Herrera reportedly was a paid informant of the CIA, which diplomatic sources say overlooked both his once-close links to Noriega and Panama’s one-time military strongman, Omar Torrijos, because he could be used both for information about Noriega and as a focus for fomenting discontent within the PDF.

In an interview before the Armijo firing, Herrera denied any illegal activity and said that charges that his troops have brutalized political opponents were disinformation spread by Noriega to discredit him.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Fitzwater said a report that Noriega might have been tipped off in advance of the Dec. 20 U.S. invasion “does not appear to be true.”

The report, which first appeared in Friday’s editions of the Washington Times, suggested that Noriega might have had 48 hours warning of the U.S. action.

However, Fitzwater said, “It seems unlikely there was a tip-off in view of all the accounts of his surprise--that he was having dinner in a restaurant supposedly and drove all over town and so forth.”

At the State Department, a spokesman confirmed that Nicaragua has protested what it described as a second incursion by U.S. forces into the residences of Nicaraguan diplomats in Panama City. But he said Washington had been unable to determine if the charge is true.

The Administration apologized earlier for the invasion by U.S. troops into the home of the Nicaraguan ambassador last week. President Bush called it “a screw-up.”

Speaker Thomas S. Foley announced that a House delegation will visit Panama today and Friday to investigate the military and political situation and report its findings promptly to him.

Foley assigned House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri to head the bipartisan group of 30 House members, with GOP Whip Newt Gingrich of Georgia leading the Republican contingent.

Gerstenzang reported from Washington and Freed from Panama City.