Again, it was a scene played repeatedly for television viewers back home: President Bush being hustled off a stage by Secret Service agents amid tremendous confusion.

Six months ago it was Tokyo and an unforgettable stomach ailment that caused Bush to collapse virtually into the arms of a horrified Japanese prime minister. Thursday it was a downtown plaza in Panama City, with dignitaries, gunshots and police tear gas fired at anti-American demonstrators.Bush and his wife, Barbara, were unharmed in Thursday's incident, but like Tokyo, the image of a U.S. president in distress will linger.

Bush aides even joked that the incident - the first time a U.S. president has been so much in harm's way since Ronald Reagan was shot outside a Washington hotel in January 1981 - would make the Earth Summit in Brazil a relative picnic for Bush.

Bush was able to make light of the episode, saying "no tiny little left-wing demonstration" would set back the cause of Panamanian democracy - or cause him to lose his stride.

Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater offered a whimsical comment: "It's been a very good trip with the exception of the tear gas and the demonstrations."

Panamanian officials blamed local police for the trouble. Vice President Billy Ford said it was "inexcusable" that riot police fired large amounts of tear gas to disperse demonstrators and demanded an investigation, while Panama City Mayor Mayin Correa asked President Guillermo Endara for a police shakeup.

But it served to point up a serious problem for a president who a year ago was the toast of the world for his successful conduct of the Persian Gulf war.

Bush had hoped that a warm welcome in Panama, where the United States in 1989 removed a dictator, would help offset the criticism the president would get on the environment in Rio de Janeiro.

Instead, it only served to show still more problems in an area usually regarded as his strong suit - foreign policy.

Although friendly crowds lined the streets between the Panama City airport and the presidential palace on Bush's arrival, after his lunch with President Guillermo Endara he encountered far more hostility from those on the streets on his way to downtown Porras Plaza.

Some scowled; others held aloft anti-American banners.

There already was smoke from burning tires and garbage in the air as Bush mounted the platform in the packed plaza for an address to the people of Panama.

Suddenly, there was a series of small explosions from an intersection near the plaza. The air quickly filled with tear gas and Bush rubbed his eyes.

Bush rose and headed toward the microphone, as if he were going to address the crowd. Suddenly agents circled Bush. One draped a long bulletproof coat around his shoulders.

The president waved off an agent's offer of a handkerchief to wipe his eyes, while Mrs. Bush, who has an eye condition, rubbed her eyes and looked startled. Onlookers described the president as pale.

The crowd was beginning to break down the wooden barrier that separated them from the buffer zone - an area between the crowd and the platform containing mainly a few reporters and photographers and agents.

The agents then formed a tight circle around the president and Barbara Bush and led them back off stage.

Part of the crowd actually broke through the wooden fence and started surging toward the platform. People were running all over the place, as hundreds, weeping and choking, scattered from the plaza. Children in the crowd were trampled and screaming was heard.

Agents had handguns and automatic rifles drawn as they led the Bushes to a waiting limousine and rushed them to Albrook Air Base.

"The situation was really a result of the tear gas," Fitzwater told reporters. The eye-stinging tear gas was apparently all fired by local police in an effort to control demonstrators.

But John Magraw, head of the Secret Service and the agent in charge of Bush's detail, suggested there was actual gunfire in addition to the explosion of tear gas canisters.

"There was local authorities' gunfire and other gunfire we couldn't identify," he said. He said the gunfire propelled the decision to move Bush out of the square.

Fitzwater said: "We don't think the president was in any immediate danger."

The base was to be Bush's next stop anyway, and he told an already-assembled audience of several thousand U.S. service members and their families, "Don't let this little ripple that happened out there today in the plaza, a handful of people trying to disrupt this wonderful welcome, don't let it discourage you."

Many of the members of the audience were among the 24,000 troops Bush sent in December 1989 to topple the government of Gen. Manuel Noriega.

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The demonstration came a day after a U.S. serviceman was killed and another seriously wounded when their Army vehicle was ambushed outside Panama City.

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Slain GI identified

The U.S. soldier killed Wednesday in an ambush in Panama has been identified by the Pentagon as Army Cpl. Zak A. Hernandez, 22, of Guayanilla, Puerto Rico. Her-nandez was killed and Sgt. Ronald T. Marshall, 24, of For-dyce, Ark., was seriously wounded when their Humvee multipurpose vehicle was attacked by three men with assault rifles.

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