Word: panamas
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Another focus of the anger was the difficulty of ousting Panama's arrogant military leader, General Manuel Antonio Noriega. U.S. attorneys in Tampa and Miami last month had announced indictments of Noriega for drug trafficking and money laundering. The charges made it impossible for the Reagan Administration to continue to overlook Noriega's sinister activities...
...Administration's initial steps against Noriega last week seemed timid and tentative. In response to a deadline imposed by Congress in 1986, the President struck Panama from a list of nations certified as cooperating with the U.S. in reducing the production or transport of drugs. Any such "decertified" nation loses half of its U.S. economic aid and faces American opposition to requests for loans from international lending agencies. But the move was only symbolic, since U.S. aid to Panama was discontinued last year after anti-American demonstrators attacked the U.S. embassy...
...Administration's tactics in dealing with Noriega, however, soon turned out to be tougher than its toothless drug decertification had suggested. The State Department declared that Panama President Eric Arturo Delvalle had been unconstitutionally dismissed by a legislature controlled by Noriega after Delvalle attempted to fire the general. Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead certified that the proper custodian of Panamanian government funds in the U.S. Federal Reserve and federally insured banks was Juan Sosa, Delvalle's Ambassador in Washington. Sosa thus controls $50 million that would otherwise come under the direction of Noriega's cronies...
Delvalle and Sosa sought other ways to squeeze the Noriega government financially. One was to urge the Administration to hold up $7 million that the U.S. will soon owe Panama as a periodic payment required by the Panama Canal treaties. Delvalle has persuaded most of Panama's worldwide consulates to retain the more than $20 million in annual payments that the government reportedly receives from 11,000 merchant ships registered under the Panamanian flag. In a written response to questions from TIME last week, Delvalle declared from hiding, "All imaginable pressures, no matter how dramatic they may seem, should...
Worried about a financial collapse, depositors rushed to withdraw cash from Panamanian banks, and the Panama National Bank declared that it could not help meet the demands placed on these institutions. All banks in the country were shut down by Friday. An anti-Noriega general strike gradually picked up steam before being called off by its leaders, who were worried that an economic panic might produce widespread violence...