And Take a Memo: More Birdseed

By PAUL GRAY/

Washington is souring on the government it helped install in Panama 11 months ago. The chief source of unhappiness is the refusal of President Guillermo Endara's administration to sign a treaty that would, among other things, allow American investigators to look into secret bank accounts. Without such scrutiny, U.S. officials maintain, Panama will remain what it was under Manuel Noriega: a prime money-laundering center for drug cartels. And President Endara's problems extend well beyond the disapproval of his American benefactors. Some of his own colleagues complain about the influence exerted on Endara, 54, by his bride of five months, Ana Mae Diaz Chen, 23. Aides say the President's wife walks into Cabinet meetings uninvited to deliver messages to her husband, then hangs around to offer opinions, unfailingly seconded by Endara. "He lives in a cage," says one Panamanian official, "a very shapely 23-year-old cage."

With reporting by David E. Thigpen