U.S. Must Help Panama’s Recovery, Endara Warns

President Guillermo Endara warned Tuesday that if the United States fails to provide sufficient economic aid for his government, all of the effort put into deposing dictator Manuel A. Noriega will have been wasted.

“People will probably seek solutions outside the democratic process; they will think that Noriega’s times were better times,” he told senior editors and correspondents of The Times in an hourlong interview.

“All our efforts will be lost . . . all will be shattered,” including the gains made from the Dec. 20 U.S. invasion, Endara cautioned.

Declaring that “for us, the United States’ reaction is slow, very slow,” Endara said he plans to make a personal appeal to President Bush in Washington before Bush’s State of the Union address Jan. 31.

The Panamanian government is seeking $1.5 billion in U.S. aid to help it recover not only from the damage of the invasion but also from the economic wreckage left by the two-year American effort to oust Noriega.

“If things do not start to happen within two or three months, the people will start getting mad and disillusioned with democracy and the U.S.,” Endara said. He said he believes that “in as soon as a year, they will see a very different situation than there is right now--probably worse than Noriega.”

Beyond Panama’s economic problems, Endara said he is still trying to develop a policy that will purge the government of vestiges of the Dignity Battalions, paramilitary units that Noriega used to intimidate political opponents.

He also acknowledged political and security risks in creating a new military composed mostly of remnants of Noriega’s 16,000-member Panama Defense Forces--led by officers “who were not angels.”

But in an evident effort to play on American sensitivity about the prospect of a resurgent leftist movement that might jeopardize American influence over the Panama Canal, he stressed that the principal threat to his new government comes not from the old military but from the now-dormant left.

“They would gain a lot of power and popularity if things don’t start to happen,” he said.

The usually good-natured former lawyer was somber as he told his audience that “things are so bad, so explosive . . . that all that the United States has done--its big effort, all our efforts--will be lost.”

Although Endara acknowledged that his country has some responsibility for rebuilding its economy, his bleak warnings were aimed clearly at Washington. “This help has to come mostly from the United States,” he declared.

Sitting in a small but comfortable office in the Presidencia, a government building just renovated after its use as a barracks by American troops, Endara outlined a recovery package that included $40 million to rebuild El Chorrillo, a slum neighborhood severely damaged by the American attack, and a $200-million public works program to combat widespread unemployment.

In addition, he said, Panama will need $700 million program in grants and loans channeled through private banks to businesses for the repair and restocking of stores victimized by the widespread looting and destruction that followed the invasion.

Endara said he has not yet stressed his concern to the White House; his last conversation with Bush was Dec. 21, the day after the invasion. But he said that visiting U.S. congressmen have encouraged him to seek immediate action on the aid request, warning that “American memories are very short.”

He said they reminded him that some other world crisis will develop and “people will forget what is happening in Panama and what the needs of Panama are.”

Endara, first laughing and then turning serious when asked about the extent of American influence over his government, said, “I’m not a puppet of the United States, and I think the Panamanian people know that.”

He acknowledged that other nations in the region have questioned the legitimacy of his U.S.-backed government.

“I don’t have any problem with the people of Panama,” he said. “I guess my problem is with the people of Latin America.”

While repeating that “the United States has been very respectful of our independence,” Endara went on to acknowledge that the very existence of his government is the result of the American invasion and occupation.

“Most Panamanian people have come to the conclusion that without U.S. help, we could never have gotten rid of Noriega,” he said.

Indeed, Endara volunteered that he originally believed Panamanians could have “autonomously” ousted the dictator. But he said new indications of the extent of Noriega’s power had persuaded him that “we could not have possibly gotten rid of Noriega alone.”

Despite the success in toppling the head of the regime, Endara said government ministries remain infected by Dignity Battalion members still holding key positions.

“We probably have not thrown everybody out,” he conceded.

In a separate interview, Juan Chevalier, minister of commerce and industry, said his staff had confronted dozens of Dignity Battalion members after finding a computerized list showing his department riddled with more than 100 such militants.

As the Noriega loyalists were called in, most would insist that “they did nothing,” he said--”until you present them with the photograph of the AK-47 in their hands.”

He described scenes in which men who had once terrorized their colleagues pleaded tearfully in hopes of salvaging their reputations, if not their jobs.

Asked if he had participated in the interrogations, Chevalier, who had been imprisoned by Noriega, replied: “By all means. You think I was going to miss that?”

Endara said he is satisfied that the process of rooting out the Dignity Battalion members is going well, although he expressed some concern about overzealous pursuit of suspected Noriega supporters.

He said he knows of “two or three cases where injustice has been done” but added that the wrongs have been corrected.

By contrast, Endara defended his government’s policy of creating a new Panamanian Public Force almost entirely from former officers and soldiers of the PDF.

He said that if the government had denied the thousands of trained soldiers a place in the new military, “they would certainly have formed the backbone of a new armed resistance.”

All top-level PDF officers “have been thrown out” of the armed forces, he said. And, although the past records of those now given command are far from spotless, “we have to work with somebody.”

Although other senior government members have urged that the new security force be limited to about 3,500 men restricted largely to police work, Endara said in the interview that he expects its final size to reach about 10,000.

This force, although smaller than Noriega’s PDF, would still include as many as four combat units of professional soldiers performing traditional military functions.

The president expressed confidence that tight fiscal control could go far toward blocking any attempt by the new security force to reclaim the powers held by the PDF. He said he also plans to fragment its structure.

“We are trying to divide them,” Endara said. He said he planned to establish separate units for immigration, criminal investigation and presidential security, duties previously kept under central military control.

Endara also expressed confidence that another reputed hallmark of the Noriega regime--the use of Panama by narcotics traffickers for money laundering--will be eliminated by his government.

“We don’t want to play any role in narco-traffic or the laundering of narco-dollars,” he said. But he indicated he sees no need to eliminate current bank regulations that permit accounts to remain secret.

Even as he touched on the problems of the military and drugs, the president was clearly determined to send a message to the Bush Administration about the need for immediate economic assistance.

“We just hope that the United States will help us now get over the problems we have,” he said in concluding the interview, “because if the United States doesn’t help us, all our efforts will go down the drain.”