Noriega Makes Personal Appeal to Judge : Drug trial: The former Panamanian dictator asks that all charges against him be presented to the jury. The request is seen as a strategic move.

Asking for a full and fair verdict, former Panamanian dictator Manuel A. Noriega said Saturday that all bribery allegations against him should be resolved because they had resulted in “fire, blood and tears” between the United States and Panama.

In a rare personal statement to the judge while a jury deliberated his fate behind closed doors, Noriega asked that all charges in his original indictment four years ago be presented to the jury, even though prosecutors have suggested deleting some that were never brought up at his trial.

The move appeared to be a strategic one on Noriega’s part. His attorney, Frank A. Rubino, said last month that he would “strenuously object” to any deletions from the indictment.

Rubino said the defense had the right to have the jurors review unproved charges so they could compare them with the evidence that was presented in court. He asked Saturday that Noriega be allowed to speak himself.

Standing straight in his military uniform and addressing U.S. District Judge William M. Hoeveler through an interpreter, Noriega said: “These very same charges, in the completed form, were publicized around the whole world. These were the same charges that in 1989, as the end result, brought fire, blood and tears between two countries.”

He added that “these are the same charges for which the papal nuncio saw fit to hand me over to the armed forces of the United States” following the December, 1989, invasion of Panama.

It was only the third time since his capture in January, 1990, that Noriega had addressed the court personally. Noriega did not take the stand in his own defense during the trial on 10 drug and racketeering charges.

The jury, after completing its first full day of deliberations Saturday, retired for the night without reaching a verdict. They will not meet today but will resume deliberations Monday. The jury did not hear Noriega’s statement.

“I very respectfully ask that these charges go in their entirety to the jury, or that none of them go in at all,” Noriega said.

Noriega specifically referred to an accusation in the indictment from Boris Olarte, a convicted Colombian drug trafficker who alleged in U.S. Senate testimony and again in an Oklahoma drug trial that he personally delivered a suitcase containing $4 million to Noriega.

Prosecutors never called Olarte to the witness stand because of doubts about his credibility. But they presented evidence that a similar amount of money had gone to associates of Noriega through a Panamanian businessman.

Hoeveler acceded to Noriega’s request to retain all the charges but said “it isn’t a significant development.” In sending the full indictment to the jury after Noriega’s morning statement, the judge said prosecutors need not prove every accusation made in it.

Associate prosecutor Myles Malman said he feared that jurors might be confused by an indictment that included material never presented in court, but he agreed with Hoeveler that “it simply is not a big deal.”

Later, meeting informally with reporters assembled in his courtroom, Hoeveler said that “it is not often that a defendant asks to say something under those circumstances. I felt it was reasonable to let him speak.”

He noted that he had instructed jurors on Friday not to concern themselves with the way Noriega had been brought to the United States for trial. But Hoeveler told reporters that Noriega’s capture by U.S. troops may have been fortunate for the former dictator.

“It was a healthy thing for him that he was brought here under the then-crisis in Panama,” the judge said, implying that Noriega’s life might have been at risk in his own country.

Hoeveler said he had ruled that the federal courts had jurisdiction in Noriega’s case because “I found no violation of due process in his being brought here.”