Noriega Defense to Stress U.S. Ally Role : Trial: Judge may limit the ex-Panamanian strongman’s attorneys from presenting evidence of his willingness to help the Nicaraguan Contras.

MIAMI —  As part of their defense strategy, attorneys for former Panamanian dictator Manuel A. Noriega hope to convince jurors at his federal court trial that their client was a good friend and ally of the United States.

In particular, they want to show that during the mid-1980s--the period when Noriega is accused of helping Colombian drug traffickers smuggle thousands of pounds of cocaine into the United States--he was assisting the Ronald Reagan Administration in what would become its worst foreign policy crisis, helping Nicaragua’s rebels combat a communist government.

But the jury hearing the racketeering and drug-smuggling case against the deposed Panamanian leader may never get the full story. U.S. District Judge William M. Hoeveler has hinted that he will limit such testimony as unrelated to the charges against Noriega.

Noriega’s lawyers subpoenaed former White House aide Oliver L. North in hopes that he will testify about contacts with the former strongman and Noriega’s willingness to help support the Contras.

Defense attorneys apparently believe testimony by North and others could overcome the prosecution’s picture of Noriega as an ogre who had no regard for U.S. society or Administration policies toward Latin America, including its war against drug terrorists.

But so far, Frank Rubino, the chief defense attorney, has been thwarted each time he has tried to inject Noriega’s relations with the Contras into the case.

“Just stay away from that,” Hoeveler told him early in the trial, upholding an objection by the prosecution to a question by Rubino about the Contras.

Rubino thought he saw another opening last week when Steven Michael Kalish, a government witness and convicted drug smuggler, told prosecutor Michael P. Sullivan about a conversation with Noriega after the general had visited the White House in November, 1983.

“He said the United States wanted him to fight communists in Nicaragua and open Panamanian banks to U.S. scrutiny,” Kalish testified. “He said he would fight the communists but never open the banks.”

Rubino, in starting his cross-examination of Kalish, asked who had told Noriega that.

“He said it was the President, Mr. Reagan,” Kalish replied.

Hoeveler then ruled out further questioning on the subject. Legal authorities said he has broad powers under the federal Classified Information Procedures Act to exclude national security information he deems irrelevant to the trial.

The transcript of a private conference in September shows that Hoeveler told Rubino: “I don’t want to get into classified stuff . . . the relationship between Noriega and the CIA and Adm. (John M.) Poindexter and the various other things we have been through already.”

Poindexter, who was convicted last year in the Iran-Contra scandal, once was North’s superior on the National Security Council. Poindexter’s conviction was reversed by an appellate court Friday.

During North’s trial in 1989, the government submitted a document that said Noriega had offered to assassinate leaders of the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua if the Reagan Administration would “help clean up Noriega’s image” and lift its ban on military sales to the Panamanian Defense Forces that Noriega headed. North told Noriega that U.S. law forbade assassinations.

Another document showed that North met with Noriega in London in September, 1986, and that Noriega said he “would try to take immediate actions against the Sandinistas” to sabotage an oil refinery, a loading dock and an airport.