Word: panamanians
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...would be unacceptable.) The monsignor pointed out that the troops surrounding the embassy made an escape from the building impossible. Noriega was told he had only two choices: to walk out and surrender to the Americans or to let Laboa arrange for him to be delivered to the new Panamanian government. Asked Noriega: Did it really matter...
Then, on the afternoon of Jan. 3, a huge rally organized by the Civic Crusade, an anti-Noriega group that held similar protests in 1987 and 1988, drew some 15,000 Panamanians to the Avenida Balboa. "Kill the Hitler!" some shouted. Waving white handkerchiefs, they jeered at "Pineapple Face" and raised pineapples skewered on sticks. Only barbed wire and U.S. troops separated the demonstrators from Noriega's shelter. Panamanian officials had tried to discourage the rally, fearing the crowd might try to attack the nunciature and grab Noriega -- an effort that might be prevented only by U.S. gunfire. Noriega decided...
Endara's chances of forming a government that does not need to be propped up by U.S. troops and tanks depend heavily on his getting control of the Panamanian military. But it is the U.S. that is picking the leaders of the new Public Forces. And though the Americans are screening former P.D.F. members against "black, gray and white" lists (black representing the deepest degree of involvement with Noriega), they have nonetheless named a former Noriega henchman to command the new militia. He is Roberto Armijo, who helped Noriega squelch a coup last October and participated in the fight against...
...substantial military force; yet Calderon has been prevailed on to say the opposite in recent interviews. The U.S. insists that a professional military is needed to protect the Panama Canal and it must, regrettably, be headed in part by Noriega's followers because hardly any uncorrupted and democratic Panamanian officers with military experience are available. "The danger," says Ambler Moss, a former U.S. Ambassador to Panama, "is that the price of stability is to reestablish the P.D.F. under a different name...
Inevitably there were mistakes. Many paratroopers missed their landing zones. The shelling of Noriega's Comandancia headquarters destroyed houses in the adjacent Chorrillo neighborhood, where many poor people live. Air attacks on the San Miguelito area were devastating. The U.S. embassy said 300 Panamanian civilians died (unofficial estimates go as high as 800), an alarming toll. Many Panamanians criticized the failure of the Americans to move against the looting that engulfed Panama City. "There should have been troops placed along commercial arteries," complained Steve Maduro, a past director of Panama's Chamber of Commerce. "Our police force was nonexistent...