Word: panama
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...Noriega remained in the Panama City nunciature (papal embassy), presumably covering his ears against a pop-culture version of psychological warfare. U.S. troops ringing the embassy set up loudspeakers and blasted away with rock music, which to the opera-loving Noriega must have been sheer cacophony. Among the titles: No Place to Run, Voodoo Chile and You're No Good. The G.I.s harassed the nunciature in other ways too: they shot out a garden light and repeatedly stopped the papal legate, Monsignor Jose Sebastian Laboa, as he came and went...
...church, though, has a tradition of giving asylum to Latin American politicians on the run. Among them: Guillermo Endara, the U.S.-installed current President of Panama, who took shelter in the nunciature from Noriega thugs after he had won an election last May that the dictator annulled. One high-ranking Vatican official summarized the thinking: "The right to asylum must be defended, even for Lucifer." Moreover, contended a church statement, Noriega's surrender to the papal legate "helped in a very positive way to put an end to the conflict ((with invading American troops)) and to hasten the time...
...Christmas present." It promptly put a stop to the fighting that had threatened to drag out into a guerrilla campaign; Noriega loyalists saw no point in battling on after their chief was gone. Last week American troops turned their attention to restoring law-and-order and suppressing looting in Panama City, sometimes in joint patrols with members of the Panama Defense Forces (now renamed Public Forces) with whom they had exchanged gunfire days earlier...
...sighted Noriega at an officers' club at the international airport. Noriega, however, had an advance intimation of the attack. As an old intelligence operative, he could hardly have missed the cargo planes ferrying troops and equipment into American military bases. He took off for five days of scuttling around Panama City, trailing an entourage of bodyguards and their girlfriends...
...depressed by the defection of one of his top lieutenants, Luis del Cid, who surrendered to U.S. forces in the western province of Chiriqui rather than organize a resistance. Noriega, accompanied by two bodyguards, drove to a Dairy Queen ice-cream store in Paitilla, a commercial neighborhood of Panama City. He dialed the nunciature's number and spoke to Monsignor Laboa. As a non-American diplomat who has been in touch with Laboa paraphrased the conversation, Noriega requested sanctuary. On what grounds? asked Laboa. Look, Noriega replied, at this moment the Pope is beginning to celebrate Christmas in Rome...