Shah's Flight

Departure before extradition?

Once again, the deposed Shah of Iran was on the move. On Sunday, a spokesman for Panama's air force said that Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, 60, ailing from an enlarged spleen and a form of lymphatic cancer, had left the country aboard a chartered DC-8. His destination: Cairo, where Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had made an open-ended offer of sanctuary. The Shah's flight from Panama, his home in exile since December, could create internal difficulties for Sadat, whose regime is being criticized by Muslim zealots sympathetic to the Iranian revolution. The departure would also complicate diplomatic efforts to free the 50 Americans held hostage by militants at the U.S. embassy. The day before the Shah's flight, Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh accused former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Chase Manhattan Bank Chairman David Rockefeller of trying to sneak the Shah out of Panama so he could escape extradition. That would have "a disastrous effect in Iran," he said, and would delay the freeing of the hostages.

The Shah left Panama only two days after the arrival of White House Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan and White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler. Ostensibly, they had flown to Panama City to arbitrate a dispute between Panamanian and American surgeons over who should remove the Shah's spleen. Two weeks ago, his international team of physicians had decided that surgery was essential. Flown to Panama City from his home in exile on nearby Contadora Island, the Shah checked into the Paitilla Medical Center, a modern private hospital. At the same time, the Shah's aides summoned Heart Surgeon Michael DeBakey from Houston to perform the operation, which could involve serious cardiovascular complications. When DeBakey arrived in Panama City with five assistants, he was barred from operating. Panamanian doctors at the Paitilla Center explained that their medical and national sensibilities had been deeply offended. They would not serve as "medical gofers," or errand boys, to the Yankee surgeon from Texas, they said. One official government newspaper, Critica, even commended the local doctors for having "courageously defended Panamanian sovereignty."

Early last week, a doctor at the clinic said that because the Shah was suffering from a cold the operation had been postponed. In Washington, meanwhile, President Carter issued a careful understatement: "We have a great deal of interest in the Shah's having available to him adequate medical care." DeBakey denied there had been any controversy with the Panamanian doctors.

But some of his Texas colleagues reportedly expressed the alarmist view to the State Department that the Paitilla Center lacked the equipment and support personnel needed for the spleen operation. Several of the doctors are said to have advised removal of the Shah to a large U.S. medical center, or at least to Gorgas Hospital, a well-equipped American military hospital in the former Canal Zone. On his flight to Panama, Jordan and Cutler were accompanied by an as yet unnamed physician, selected by the White House. Nonetheless, an Administration spokesman insisted at week's end that there were no plans to admit the monarch to Gorgas or fly him to the U.S.

The Shah's future was threatened not only by failing health but by the Iranian government's continuing efforts to extradite him for trial. Last week a French attorney representing the Tehran regime flew to Panama with a 450-page demand for the Shah's extradition. According to Juan Materno Vasquez, a former Panamanian Supreme Court Justice who is Iran's counsel in Panama, the law requires the Shah's arrest as soon as the document is filed at the Foreign Ministry. Although the prospect of arrest seemed unlikely, the Panamanian government clearly regarded the ailing monarch as an embarrassment, and wished he would go away. On Sunday, that wish was fulfilled.

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