Panama, Nicaragua Aid May Be Held Up : Congress: Senate Leader Mitchell criticizes ‘piecemeal’ U.S. assistance. He wants a comprehensive program.

Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) indicated Monday that Congress will withhold a large sum of emergency aid for Panama and Nicaragua until the Administration develops a comprehensive foreign aid plan.

Although the House today is expected to approve most of Bush’s $800-million request for the two countries--beating a Thursday target date set by the President three weeks ago--Mitchell suggested that the Senate is likely to vote a much smaller sum this week, putting off action on the rest indefinitely.

“I do not believe we should appropriate the full amount requested until the Administration submits a meaningful long-term foreign aid plan,” Mitchell said in a floor speech, reiterating his statement in a letter to Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

“It makes little sense for the Congress to continue to lurch from country to country on piecemeal emergency foreign aid requests for different parts of the world without some kind of an overall long-term plan,” the senator said.

Mitchell’s statement suggests that Democrats may make foreign aid a partisan, election-year battle based on a charge already being leveled against the defense budget--that the Administration lacks any vision or strategy for dealing with dramatic changes in the world.

A State Department official, who requested anonymity, said that development of a comprehensive plan “may be a laudable goal, but we don’t think this request should be held up. This request is very important to us. We think it has been thought through.”

In an interview, Mitchell indicated that the Senate would consider two bills on Bush’s Central American aid request this week.

One would authorize nearly all the $300 million that the President seeks for Nicaragua and all but $30 million of the $500 million requested for Panama. But the key measure--actually appropriating funds--would provide only a partial payment.

“There is no limit to the possible alternative scenarios,” he said.

In his speech, Mitchell said that Congress is being asked “to put together a jigsaw puzzle without any overall picture and without all the pieces.”

He said there is “no rationale” on how the request relates to other parts of the budget dealing with defense, domestic programs, other foreign aid and the deficit.

“The Administration asks that we approve a one-shot infusion to Panama and Nicaragua by cutting the defense budget,” he noted. “But they provide no information for the long-term needs in Panama and Nicaragua. And what about Eastern Europe? What about other parts of the world?”

He also complained that the Administration has not “outlined the relationship of any plan to our national security objectives. For example, to pay for the aid to Panama and Nicaragua, the Administration now supports using defense offsets which were originally planned to be used to avoid layoffs of military personnel. Is foreign aid now more important to the Administration than keeping our men and women in uniform? If so, they should say so.”

On March 13, Bush requested “urgent” economic aid to assist both the anti-Sandinista leaders elected in Nicaragua last February and the government installed in Panama last December when dictator Manuel A. Noriega was ousted by U.S. military intervention.

“In both Panama and Nicaragua, there is now a revolution of rising expectations brought on by democracy and the chance for economic opportunity that the citizens of those countries have not felt for many years,” Assistant Secretary of State Bernard Aronson recently told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this story.