Will Mend Latin Ties, Bush Says : Diplomacy: He forswears gunboat diplomacy and says no plea bargain is planned with Panama’s Noriega.

With deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel A. Noriega locked up in a Miami cell, President Bush said Friday that he will undertake a special effort to mend bruised relations with Latin America and convince the region’s leaders that the United States is not reverting to gunboat diplomacy.

Responding to reporters’ questions for the first time since Noriega’s surrender in Panama City on Wednesday night, Bush declared his commitment “to a fair trial” for the former dictator and expressed no interest in pursuing a possible plea bargain agreement.

The President’s focus on the need to address relations with other nations in the Western Hemisphere amounted to a public acknowledgment that the massive military operation had caused diplomatic problems for the Administration, even as it was cheered by crowds in Panama.

“If there is damage, I can repair it,” Bush said.

As a demonstration of his concern, he said, he is sending Vice President Dan Quayle to Central America. Before the Dec. 20 invasion, Quayle had been scheduled to visit Honduras to represent Bush at the presidential inauguration of Rafael L. Callejas in Tegucigalpa on Jan. 27. The vice president’s aides have said that it is possible the trip also would include a stop in Panama and El Salvador, or that an additional trip would be scheduled.

“I view this as very, very important diplomacy, and I am determined not to neglect the democracies in this hemisphere,” Bush said in a statement he read at the opening of a White House news conference.

“Some have felt that we were so infatuated with the change in Eastern Europe that we were in a process of neglecting this hemisphere, and that is not the case,” the President said.

“Our policy of cooperation is firm,” he continued. “We are not reverting to just, you know, a willful . . . use of force that has no rationale.”

Throughout the century, Washington’s ability--and willingness--to use its military and economic might to enforce its will throughout the hemisphere has served at times to draw a deep division between the United States and its neighbors to the south.

Even in the best of times, relations have been marked by pronounced suspicions about Washington’s motives.

Among other incidents, U.S. troops were used in 1914 in Mexico to seize Veracruz, in the 1920s to install the regime that was ultimately taken over by the Somoza family in Nicaragua, in 1965 in the Dominican Republic to halt a civil war and install a provisional government and in 1983 to overthrow the government of Grenada after it was seized by an extremist Marxist faction.

Throughout Latin America, concerns have been raised and suspicions aggravated by the invasion that toppled Noriega and set in motion the events that brought the former dictator to a federal courtroom in Miami on Thursday on drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges.

“I’m concerned about it,” Bush said, recognizing “how our friends south of our border . . . look at the use of American force anywhere.”

Soured relations are “correctable,” he said, because Latin American nations know that the United States “exhausted the remedies” in its efforts to remove Noriega from office through peaceful means.

“Given the history of the use of U.S. force, I would be remiss if I didn’t face up to the problems that we must go forward diplomatically now to explain how this President looks at the protection of American life, that we acted in our view well within our rights, but we will continue consultation,” the President said.

“This isn’t a shift away from what some had termed ‘excessively timid diplomacy,’ ” Bush said, explaining that he had not abandoned what he prefers to call a “cautious, prudent” approach.

The unpopularity in Latin America of the invasion and the installation of a new government by force has been reflected in the failure of many Latin nations to recognize the government of President Guillermo Endara.

So far, the only other nations in this hemisphere besides the United States that have given diplomatic recognition to the Endara government are El Salvador, Costa Rica and Guatemala.

In his news conference, Bush said that Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger and Deputy Treasury Secretary John Robson, in their visit to Panama on Wednesday, had discussed housing programs, business development and bank loans to spur Panamanian economic growth.

“The revitalization of the Panamanian economy is a major priority in the months ahead,” he said.

Some officials in Panama have said that the country will need as much as $2 billion to repair invasion-related damage and to get the economy back on its feet now that sanctions, imposed by the United States to put pressure on Noriega, have been lifted.

Bush said that future invasions similar to the Panama operation are possible--if similar conditions are present--but he added: “I can’t visualize another situation quite this unique.”

He has said that the invasion was launched to protect the lives of Americans in Panama, to restore democracy and to bring Noriega to trial. For nearly two years, the United States had tried unsuccessfully by less than warlike means to persuade or to force Noriega to step down, after he was indicted on drug charges in U.S. District Courts in Miami and Tampa, Fla.

“It wasn’t a simple case of going after a person who had been indicted for narcotics. We had the abortion of democracy, but you also had this threat to the lives of Americans,” Bush said. He was referring to the shooting death of a U.S. Marine lieutenant outside the Panama Defense Forces headquarters the week before the invasion and Noriega’s refusal to accept the results of presidential elections on May 7 that all serious independent observers had said was won by Endara by margins of up to 3-to-1.

In discussing the court procedures against Noriega, who was arraigned in Miami on Thursday, Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh “assures me that our case is strong, our resolve is firm, and our legal representations are sound,” Bush said.

“Our government is not seeking a deal with Noriega,” the President said, referring to speculation that prosecutors might offer a reduced charge in exchange for information from Noriega about drug trafficking activity. “Our policy remains that we have brought him to this country for prosecution.”

After he said that Noriega “has a right to do what he wants,” in terms of seeking a plea bargain, Bush was asked if he was ruling out a deal. “Well, I’m not ruling it in,” he replied.