CRISIS IN THE CARIBBEAN : Latin Americans Feel Relief--and Are Skeptical : Intervention: Many could sympathize with the cause of Aristide. But the U.S. incursion force wins little support.

From Latin America--where U.S.-led military interventions have frequently shaped history--governments, politicians and the public expressed relief Monday that an invasion of Haiti had been averted but skepticism about how the military intervention will end.

“I think President Clinton deserves a lot of credit,” Colombian Foreign Minister Rodrigo Pardo said. “The whole continent wanted to avoid military action.”

Indeed, much of Latin America felt quite ambivalent about the Haiti conflict. Many countries, having seen military strongmen subvert their own civilian democracies, were sympathetic to the cause of Haiti’s democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

But few could publicly support the use of force by a world power like the United States. And many people in countries such as Panama, where a U.S. invasion five years ago ousted a dictator but left a country in shambles, cautioned that military intervention does not solve deeper problems.

There was criticism, too, of the terms negotiated by former President Jimmy Carter and his fellow emissaries from Washington for the removal of powerful military figures from power without specifying that they have to leave Haiti or face punishment for alleged human rights abuses.

“This sets a dangerous precedent . . . and gives carte blanche to any military that wants to stage a coup and then years later knows it will be possible to negotiate an honorable withdrawal with full guarantees,” Panama’s leading newspaper, La Prensa, said Monday in a front-page editorial.

“The United States has become the godfather of impunity with this agreement,” warned Miguel Antonio Bernal, a Panamanian political scientist and a leading activist in the pre-invasion campaign to oust Gen. Manuel A. Noriega.

Official Panama, however, reacted more positively. The 18-day-old government of President Ernesto Perez Balladares repeated its offer to grant asylum to the Haitian military chief, Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, and other members of the junta to defuse the crisis.

Foreign Minister Gabriel Lewis Galindo, who has had a friendly relationship with Carter since the two helped to negotiate the 1977 Panama Canal treaties, sent word to the former President on Friday that Panama was willing to assure Cedras he would be safe in Panama.

“We wanted to give Carter some ammunition,” Lewis said in an interview Monday, citing the fact that there is no extradition treaty between Panama and Haiti, and that Panama has a tradition of protecting asylum-seekers.

Before Carter brokered a last-minute deal with Cedras late Sunday, the Haiti issue had threatened to drive a wedge in the hemisphere. Most English-speaking Caribbean countries, along with Argentina, generally supported U.S. efforts.

Argentina, which has pursued a policy of alignment with the United States since the election of President Carlos Saul Menem, was the only Latin American country to vote in favor of U.N. Security Council Resolution 940 authorizing the use of force in Haiti.

“We are very, very happy with the agreement,” Argentine Foreign Minister Guido di Tella said. “Now we must monitor the evolution of events to be sure the Haitian military complies with its word.”

Argentina had previously pledged to participate in a 6,000-member U.N. peacekeeping force for Haiti and also promised to send 90 border police and 10 physicians.

But countries such as Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil were adamantly opposed to military intervention.

Although there was no immediate official reaction from the Mexican government Monday, sources said privately the government was relieved that the United States had stopped short of invading Haiti. But also in the works was a traditional anti-interventionist position opposing the large U.S. occupation of the nearby Caribbean nation.

Foreign Minister Manuel Tello, who was on an official visit to Cuba on Monday, had stated Mexico’s opposition to a hostile American invasion.

Cuba’s state radio labeled the eleventh-hour accord “a false solution to the conflict.” It criticized the agreement for “leaving intact the power structure in Haiti, like the army and the other repressive forces.”

But Radio Cuba seemed to hail the United States for resolving the immediate crisis “without firing a shot” through “a compromise solution that avoided, for now, senseless bloodshed.”

In analyzing the text of the accord, though, Radio Cuba declared that the provision under which the Haitian Parliament plans to grant Cedras amnesty will, in effect, “endorse more than 4,000 assassinations and all sorts of horror and torture.”

In Guatemala, where a powerful military has traditionally wielded enormous influence over civilian rulers, there was praise for a peaceful solution but reminders of a “moral obligation” to help the poor of Haiti and the region.

“The (Carter pact) does not solve the roots of (Haiti’s) enormous social problems,” cautioned newspaper Siglo XXI in an editorial. “We would like to think that the United States and the United Nations, who were ready to go to war to restore democracy to the Caribbean island and to stop immigration, will now be ready to unleash volleys of economic aid and open the doors of sustained development.”

Times staff writers William R. Long in Santiago, Chile, and Mark Fineman in Mexico City contributed to this report.