Word: panama
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Noriega's increasingly bombastic language and his trigger-happy troops may have been indications that events were spinning out of control in Panama, forcing him to extremes. But other evidence suggested that the dictator was losing control of himself: U.S. troops searching his various hideouts found, along with pictures of Adolf Hitler, collections of pornography and sophisticated weapons and more than 50 kilos of cocaine. In one Noriega guesthouse, searchers found a bucket of blood and entrails, which they said may have been used for occult rites to protect him. Was the accused drug trafficker deteriorating into a megalomaniac drug...
First, however, Noriega must be found. At week's end a State Department official said Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Michael Kozak had traveled to Panama to advise the Endara government and try to negotiate Noriega's surrender. One of the general's American lawyers, Raymond Takiff, predicts that will never happen. "I feel unhappily secure in my belief that he will be killed," Takiff says. "He will not be captured...
...ceremony was rich with symbolism, but the circumstances were awkward, to say the least. Shortly after U.S. troops began to move, a new government was inaugurated with the aim of restoring democracy in Panama. The swearing-in took place at Fort Clayton, a U.S. military base, with only a few Panamanians present. After the new President, Guillermo Endara, and his two Vice Presidents, Guillermo Ford and Ricardo Arias Calderon, took their oath of office, they remained at the base for 36 hours...
...lawyer with little political experience before he ran for President in last May's aborted election, Endara must rebuild a society that was seriously damaged by U.S. economic sanctions, then savaged by invasion and ravaged by looters. His support comes mostly from the white business and professional classes in Panama City; he must win over the darker-skinned Panamanians of the barrios and the countryside -- those who felt emboldened and empowered by Noriega's populist anti-Yanqui tirades...
Endara might have an easier time if he were starting from scratch. His biggest challenge is to obtain the loyalty of the 12,000-strong Panama Defense Forces, a militia created and nurtured by Noriega and bent on its own survival. As the nation's police force, the P.D.F. will be essential to maintaining order. But given the army's continuing loyalty to Noriega and the rampant corruption within the officer corps, it is a breeding ground for future plots against any civilian government...