US campaign to get rid
PANAMA "double dealing." According to them, he had carried out espionage activities for the CIA and the Drug Enforcement Agency but also for Cuba and the USSR. Moreover, he was supposed to have served as a middleman for Colombian drug traffickers, laundering their money. He was also supposed to have helped get arms for the Colombian
DETERMINED to oust General Manuel Antonio Noriega, chief of Panama's Defence Force, who has gone out of favor in Washington, the US administration is resorting to its usual methods of intimidating regimes in its "backyard." It has set in motion a plan of economic strangulation.
The official Panamanian accounts in US banks have been frozen, tying up about $800 million of Panamanian government funds. Washington has also announced that US payments for Panama Canal operations will be deposited in a special closed account.
RODRIGO O'FARRELL
HE OBJECTIVE is clear. In a
T small country like Panama, which uses the dollar as its national currency and whose main income comes from the Canal, such measures will lead rapidly to economic asphyxiation.
Moreover, it has been announced that 7,000
US soldiers will begin "routine maneuvers"
in the Canal Zone.
At the same time, in the Panamanian capital, the right-wing opposition, which takes its cues from Miami, has declared its readiness to unite around Eric Delvalle, a well- heeled owner of a TV station who was put into the presidency in September 1985 by
Noriega and removed by him on February
For his part, George Bush warned from
Washington that General Noriega would soon be arrested for his crimes and brought before a court. The destabilization program
Accusing the United States of committing the "worst kind of aggression, economic aggression," Panama's strongman responded that the only way he would leave the country was "dead," because he had an
"alliance of blood" with his people. Manuel
Solis, the new president put in to replace
Delvalle, also condemned the US freezing of Panamanian funds, and ordered the closure of all the banks, awaiting regularization of the supply of dollars in the country.
From Havana, Fidel Castro appealed to the Latin American governments not to abandon Panama at a time when it was bewell, are now determined to get rid of him. The real causes of this change of attitude are a well-guarded secret in Washington (the alleged reason is that he is a corrupt military officer). But some specialists consider that all this is linked to a growing unease in Washington about the type of governments that have been taking form in Panama (unstable civilian administrations under the tutelage of nationalist military officers), and their unsuitability for the role they are called on to play in the recent evolution of the crisis in Central America.
In the conditions of the Esquipulas II accords (see /V 135), Panama is expected to play a more active role in Washington's military plans. Another, and no less important element, is the approach of the date when the September 7, 1977, TorrijosCarter agreements are supposed to go into effect. They call for transferring sovereignty over the Canal Zone to Panama on December 31, 1999.
The offensive against Noriega went public in June 1986. The US secret services passed to the press several documents indicating that the general was a champion of
Atlantic Ocean Panama guerrilla organization, M-19.
Accusations of arms and drugs trafficking
Initially vague, these charges gradually became more definite. Witnesses testifying before a federal court and a US Senate subcommittee in recent months have claimed that Noriega also sold arms to the Nicaraguan contras at the same time as supplying weapons to the Salvadoran rebels. It was also said that the general had a million dollar bank account filled with payments made by the Medellín Cartel of drug traffickers, and that he had transferred high technology to the Eastern Bloc countries. Among all these charges was one that he had permitted the opening of an Acroflot (Soviet airlines)
Three "key" witnesses - Steven Kalish, Ramón Rodríguez and Floyd Carlton — are implicated in drug trafficking. Carlton made his statement from under a hood. But Noriega's other accusers are not so shadowy. José Blandón, former Panamanian consul in New York, claimed that the general collaborated with Oliver North in the Iran-Contra affair. Colonel Diaz Herrera, former commander of the Panamanian armed forces, said that Noriega had rigged the 1984 elections, that he got money from drug traffickers, and gave the order for the assassination of Hugo Spadafora, Panama's deputy minister of health, whose decapitated body was found on September 15, 1985.
Gabriel Lewis, a fervent partisan of Omar Torrijos (he was one of the drafters of the Canal treaty) and former ambassador to Washington, has repeated these accusations,. From his office in Washington, with the help of two US advisors, he has given impetus to the campaign against the Panamanian strongman.
Long-standing rumors against Noriega
• Colon Present route of canal PANAMA
10 mls ing besieged by imperialism. At the same
16km time, the Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega, renewed his unconditional support for the Solis government.
The White House and the Pentagon, which from Richard Nixon's time seem to have had good relations with General Noriega, and who up until a few months ago acknowledged that he had served them
Colombia
Pacific Ocean
Costa
Rica
David
Santiago
Gulf of
1| Aruba
Gulf of
Panama
Colombia
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of Noriega
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9
The importance of the Panama Canal
THE INTER-OCEAN canal is vital to US economic and military interests. Some
40 per cent of US trade with Asia and the Pacific passes through it. In only eight hours, US warships can cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Today, there are nine US military bases in the Canal Zone — five army bas-
PANAMA intensified in particular after General Rubén Darío Paredes, Washington's candidate for succeeding Torrijos, was pushed out of the decision-making center of the former National Guard by Noriega, who was the deceased leader's real confidant.
es, three air bases and one naval base. There are 35,000 US personnel, of
The White House then tried to manipulate the wily "Pineapple Face" (as General Nowhom 10,000 are in the military forces at the disposal of the Southern Command, which "centralizes all the activities of US troops in Central and South riega is known by his detractors), using
America." A battalion of "Special Forces" and a brigade of "Green Berets" are both bribery and cunning. But it failed topermanently based in Panama. The air forces include A-7 Corsaire fighter tally to keep "its" man under control.
bombers, AC-130 reconnaissance planes and assault helicopters. The naval
At least once in this period, an attempt to assassinate Noriega was contemplated. The
Up until 1984, the School of the Americas operated in Panama. This was the
US news weekly Time has reported that in
1972 a federal narcotics agent proposed, in center for training Latin American officers in counter-insurgency warfare. Panaview of the general's "criminal trajectory,' ma is an essential way station for CIA agents and has been the launching pad that he be physically liquidated. The idea for many clandestine operations. It is said that Nicaraguan contras were trained
In Panama, and that some the US soldiers that invaded the island of Grenada
Noriega and various of his collaborators have always denied the grave charges.
"The United States," the general says, trying in this way to to put in question the
Canal treaties." On February 8, four days after he was indicted by a Florida court, he demanded the withdrawal of the US Southern Command and of the 10,000 US soldiers stationed in the country.
The Defence Force demanded that Eric
Delvalle shut down the US bases in response to the United States' "ruthless political and economic aggression," a position that demonstrated the support Noriega still has among the Panamanian military.
President Delvalle did not believe the charges against Noriega either. Eight months ago, he rejected Colonel Diaz Herrera's claims, saying that the whole thing was part of a vile US plot to trample on the
1977 accords. This loyalty vanished when a US court indicted the general. From that time on, the Panamanian president was caught up in the operation to oust Noriega mounted by Elliot Abrams, US undersecre-
10
General Norlega - known by the nickname
"Pineapple face" (DR)
International Viewpoint • March 21, 1988 forces have nine warships.
came from units based in Panama. * tary of state for inter-American affairs,.
Under the pretext that he was visiting his cardiologist, Delvalle met in Miami with Abrams and came to the conclusion that the commander-in-chief of the Defence Force had to be removed. On his return to Panama, he summoned the general to his office and asked him to resign as a "contribution to the peace of the fatherland." Unmoved, Noriega told him that he "was not accepting advice from such a low-ranking messenger." Radicalization in response to imperialist pressures
Over television, the president asked Noriega to relinquish the high command, which led to the top ranks of the Defence Force uniting behind the general and agreeing unanimously to remove the civilian official. Manuel Solis Palma, a left politician, who opposed General Torrijos in his time from a Marxist standpoint, was appointed as the new head of the executive.
Delvalle, confronted with the failure of his maneuver and the impotence of the strike called by the right-wing employers, fled from his residence through a window. He was believed to have put himself under the protection of Arthur Davis, Reagan's ambassador in Panama.
The Solis government reflects the radicalization that is taking place in Panama in response to the imperialist pressures. It marks a clear change from the previous governments of de Royo, de la Espriella, Barletta and Delvalle, in which there was an uneasy equilibrium between representatives of the oligarchy and Torrejista
The contradictory formula fostered by the 1983 constitutional reform, giving rise to weak and unstable governments, satisfied no one. The Panamanian oligarchy has been trying to regain total control of the government by destroying the democratic resistance. And the imperialists intend to stay on in Panama after the year 2,000.
Moreover, a visible movement in the armed forces, known as the "Torrijos Rectification," has given the White House another cause for alarm.The leaders of this movement argue that in view of the nationalist military officers' failure, "owing to their romance with the oligarchy,", and in view of their continuing loss of credibility, they should resume "the strategic course marked out by Torrijos," and make the Defence Force a "real democratic army of national liberation."
It is in this general context that the charg es surfaced about the alleged corruption of the Panamanian strongman.
The "civilian" protests against Noriega's stubbornness have a clear class meaning. The strikes have been sponsored by the industrialists' association (SIP), the chamber of commerce (Conep), and the oligarchic right, sectors that talk about restoring democracy without offering the slightest program for solving the problems of the masses. The broad masses of the people have therefore shown little interest in these days of action.
Noriega's supporters in the Partido Revolucionario Democrático are denouncing the "imperialist plot" and opposing the bosses' strikes with the slogan "a plant on strike is a plant seized."
The country's economic crisis, aggravated by the freezing of its funds, makes it impossible to stabilize the Panamanian situation. In view of the failure of Delvalle's operation, the US will play other cards and step up its pressures. That is
General Noriega, of course, is no innocent. As happens in armies trained by the
States, corruption is common among the officers. Nonetheless, Washington has shown itself not to be above using slander as a political weapon. Fidel Castro and the Sandinistas have also been accused of being accomplices of the drug traffickers. The present propaganda campaign against Noriega seems designed more to eliminate a nationalist leader and set up a regime readier to accommodate to the Pentagon than it is to clean up the Panamanian political scene. *