Noriega Co-Defendant Agrees to Testify Against Him : Narcotics: The former Panama leader’s ‘close associate’ pleads guilty to drug smuggling. He may assist in a second case also.

Manuel A. Noriega, imprisoned in Miami awaiting trial on cocaine-smuggling charges, saw his legal troubles deepen Friday when his co-defendant in another drug case pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against him.

Enrique (Kiki) Pretelt, a Panamanian businessman, entered a two-count felony plea in federal court in Tampa. Pretelt said that he had conspired with Noriega in 1983 and 1984 to smuggle 1.4 million pounds of marijuana into the United States and to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars in drug profits.

The Tampa trial, in which the deposed Panamanian dictator and Pretelt were the only defendants, probably will take place after Noriega and more than a dozen other co-defendants are tried in Miami early next year on the larger cocaine-smuggling case.

At the same time that Noriega was charged in February, 1988, by a federal grand jury in Miami on 11 counts of international cocaine trafficking, another grand jury in Tampa indicted him on three counts of marijuana smuggling. A third defendant in the Tampa case, Cesar Rodriguez-Contreres, died under mysterious circumstances in Panama last year.

Robert W. Genzman, the U.S. attorney in Tampa, said Pretelt, 47, who surrendered to FBI agents in Panama City last January, “has agreed to cooperate fully” with the U.S. government. Pretelt’s plea agreement subjects him to a maximum possible sentence of 10 years in prison, and he has agreed to forfeit proceeds of his marijuana-trafficking activity totaling $108,000, Genzman said.

Noriega could receive a maximum sentence of more than 100 years in prison on the cocaine-trafficking charges in Miami. He could be sentenced to an additional 35 years if convicted in the Tampa case, officials said.

Authorities would not specify how much information Pretelt could provide about Noriega, but one source called him “one of the closest associates Noriega had--he was there for an awful lot of what happened.” In an indication that he may also provide information useful in the Miami prosecution, both Genzman and U.S. Atty. Dexter Lehtinen of Miami signed his plea agreement.

Pretelt ran a chain of duty-free shops in Panama and was involved in many other enterprises there, authorities said. He has been described in U.S. Senate testimony as a bribery bagman for Noriega and the former military dictator’s civilian liaison with drug smugglers and their money managers.

The plea agreement said that in 1983 Pretelt helped form a business partnership in Panama, identified as Servicios Turisticos, through which marijuana-smuggling profits were laundered. Pretelt will testify that Noriega was a “silent partner” who shared in the proceeds, the agreement said.

Before Pretelt’s cooperation, the Tampa case appeared to rely heavily on the expected testimony of Steven Michael Kalish, bolstered by documents. Kalish, now serving a federal prison sentence after pleading guilty in 1987 to a charge of conducting a criminal enterprise, told a Senate committee that he had headed the marijuana-smuggling and money-laundering ring from which payments were made to Noriega.

Pretelt’s plea agreement identified Kalish, the late Cesar Rodriguez and Pretelt as the partnership’s officers of record. Each partner, as well as Noriega, received a commission whenever drug proceeds were deposited into Panamanian bank accounts, the agreement said.

“In 1984, Kalish discussed with defendant Pretelt, Rodriguez and Noriega his plan to bring approximately 400,000 pounds of marijuana from Colombia to the United States via Panama,” the court papers said.

“The plan was to conceal the marijuana in containers of plantains (banana plants). The containers were to be shipped from Colombia to Colon, Panama, (and) there the containers would be re-labeled to reflect that the shipment originated in Panama. The containers would then be shipped from Panama to the United States.”

Pretelt will testify that he was put in charge of the false labeling, but the shipment was aborted when Kalish was arrested in the United States in July, 1984, the government said.

In a related development Friday, U.S. District Judge William M. Hoeveler, who has presided over pretrial preparations in Noriega’s Miami case, issued an 80-page order rejecting a series of legal challenges in which Noriega’s attorneys sought to block his trial.

The judge chiefly turned aside arguments that, because Noriega is a foreign leader, he did not have authority to try him. Also, Hoeveler rejected contentions that he should throw out the drug charges on grounds that Noriega’s arrest followed a military invasion of Panama that offended the conscience of most Americans.

“Thus, we go forward,” Hoeveler concluded.