Word: noriega
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Ordinarily Monsignor Jose Sebastian Laboa, the Vatican's Ambassador to Panama, greets visitors with a tray of coffee and cake. But when General Manuel Antonio Noriega strode into the papal embassy on Christmas Eve, such hospitality was hardly appropriate. The fugitive strongman was agitated, pacing the nunciature's marble floors like a caged tiger. The four aides who accompanied him were carrying suspicious vials of injectable liquids and an assortment of guns. Laboa demanded that Noriega relinquish the weapons. At first he refused, but then he apparently complied -- although a submachine gun was later found under...
Thus began an eleven-day test of wills as the Spanish-born papal nuncio used psychological pressure and logic to convince his guest that Noriega's best, indeed only, option was to give himself up. Upholding the Vatican tradition of granting sanctuary to anyone fleeing persecution, Laboa would not kick the general out. But he had no intention of allowing him to prolong his stay indefinitely...
...accustomed to lavish quarters amply stocked with alcohol and drugs was given a stark 10-ft. by 6-ft. rear room, decorated only with a crucifix. From his spartan quarters Noriega could not see the U.S. soldiers deployed outside on the Avenida Balboa; his only window was opaque. His television set did not work. There was no air conditioning. In Panama's 90 degrees heat, that hardly made for comfort...
...days dragged on, Noriega underwent abrupt mood shifts. One night he sat in the kitchen and swapped stories with Laboa while awaiting dinner. The next day he never left his room. Recalled Laboa: "He talked very little, nodded a lot. He is impenetrable." Some diplomatic observers thought Noriega was showing classic signs of drug withdrawal. But a pharmacist who examined him in the nunciature concluded that he was not an addict. "Poor Noriega," said a diplomat posted to the Vatican in Rome. "No drugs, no booze, no sex -- and eating Vatican food...
Though increasingly nervous, Noriega did not seem bothered by the loud rock-'n'-roll that American troops were blasting at the embassy through loudspeakers for three days. But the speakers also carried news broadcasts reporting that his troops had stopped fighting after he abandoned them, that U.S. officials were moving to freeze funds he had stashed abroad. When the Vatican protested the rock-'n'-roll offensive and the music stopped, Noriega lived in relative silence, with only a Bible to read...