Panama Update Archives
Number 24, September/October 1998U.S. Troops Set to Leave after Panama's ReferendumThe three-year negotiations to maintain U.S. troops in Panama after 1999 came to a end in September, after President Ernesto Pérez Balladares lost his bid to permit his own reelection. Pérez Balladares told U.S. Ambassador William Hughes on September 1 that talks for the proposed "counter-drug center" in Panama must come to a close, according to Inside the Pentagon.
The agreement had been foundering for months, despite an announcement last December that an "agreement in principle" had been reached to keep several thousand U.S. troops in Panama as part of the "center." But opposition within the ruling Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) and other sectors led Pérez Balladares in April to call the accord a mamotreto or "monstrosity".
Even had the president won his bid to run for reelection, negotiations for a military agreement would have been difficult. In a personal meeting, Panama's Foreign Affairs Minister Ricardo Alberto Arias told the FOR that Panama opposed the agreement's provision for military missions unrelated to counter-drug operations, "and other countries we consulted also objected," he said. Panama also objected to U.S. insistence that Panama not have jurisdiction over crimes committed by U.S. soldiers. Instead, Panama insisted on the right to end the agreement after three years, instead of the 12 years agreed in December, if it became a cause of conflict between the two countries.
"I hope that we receive the canal without a counter-drug center," Legislative Assembly president Gerardo González said at the end of July. "There are other countries offering support for this project and we applaud their doing it." "We still consider ourselves at an impasse," a Clinton administration spokeswoman said on August 18.
Meanwhile, the principal players in the drawn-out negotiations are moving on. U.S. Ambassador William Hughes, long a champion of the negotiations, leaves Panama in October, and the State Department has even appointed a new Panama Desk officer. Minister Arias, also central to the talks, had planned for months to resign from his post.
The Clinton administration's nominee to replace Hughes is Simon Ferro, a Cuban-American businessman active in Florida Democratic Party politics.
Some Panamanians are wary of declaring their struggle for the withdrawal of the military bases over and done with, especially because leading presidential candidates of the governing PRD (Fernando Sánchez Cardenas and Hugo Torrijos) explicitly favor continuing negotiations after presidential elections next May 2. But it's unlikely the Pentagon will wait that long, because if an agreement were not reached there would be no time to relocate U.S. forces and facilities.
Instead, the Pentagon may be banking on the future negotiation of an access agreement, such as the Visiting Forces Agreement signed with the Philippines earlier this year, seven years after the Philippines rejected a treaty for continued occupation of bases by the U.S. Navy and Air Force.
In his September 1 meeting with U.S. Ambassador Hughes, President Pérez Balladares offered the use of Panama City's Tocumen Airport for the U.S. military after operations at Howard Air Base shut down next May 1, according to Inside the Pentagon. That way, the military could continue moving personnel and equipment out of Panama by air through the end of the year.
But Pérez Balladares expressed his aim to discuss post-1999 use of Tocumen Airport as well, said a U.S. official cited by Inside the Pentagon. The Southern Command used Tocumen for military flights early in Pérez Balladares' term when Howard's airstrip was under maintenance. The deputy secretaries of Defense, State and Commerce were to meet September 16 to consider whether to pursue the Tocumen option.
What's Next?
The bulk of U.S. troops in Panama belong to U.S. Army South (USARSO), which is moving to Puerto Rico in the summer of 1999. "We're focusing on Puerto Rico as being the hub in our hemisphere," said U.S. Southern Command (SouthCom) spokesman Major John Snyder. USARSO headquarters will be based at Fort Buchanan in Puerto Rico, while other troops will go to Camp Santiago, Isla Grande and Fort Allen, according to Army spokesman José Pagan.
SouthCom wants to move other military forces currently based in Panama -- including F-16 fighter jets and AWACS equipped aircraft -- to Puerto Rico, but the Air Force "has a lot of options" according to SouthCom. The Air Force is not keen on Puerto Rico "because it would require a heavy investment in infrastructure improvement," Inside the Pentagon reported. SouthCom also proposes to move "a small air element" of Army helicopters and their crews to Palmerola Air Base in Honduras, Snyder said.
Hundreds of U.S. military trainers are also moving from Panama to Puerto Rico's Roosevelt Roads, according to SouthCom. The trainers coordinate Special Operations Command-South, which conducts training exercises in "foreign internal defense" and military tactics with armies from all over the hemisphere -- a kind of off-shore School of the Americas.
In an extensive report on July 12, the Washington Post described how many of these overseas exercises have no civilian oversight because of loopholes in human right laws. "Several officers with longtime experience in Colombia said the human rights records of the Colombian units trained by special forces in these exercises are not evaluated because it would interfere with the unit's ability to work together," the Post reported. U.S. Army South, which currently numbers up to 4,000 troops, is being downsized, and may move only a few hundred soldiers to the island. "USARSO is going out of the inventory," noted the Pentagon's Treaty Implementation director, Richard McSeveney.
Many of USARSO's operations may be taken up by the Puerto Rican National Guard. Congress passed a resolution in July urging that "the [National] Guard should assume the entire USARSO mission, the Army component of the United States Southern Command based in Panama."
The U.S. Army Tropic Test Center (TTC) also continues to negotiate a post-1999 presence, as part of the City of Knowledge, an educational and scientific complex that Panama is establishing on former Albrook Airbase. The Tropic Test Center tests military equipment and weapons to understand the effect of the tropical climate. In the 1960s, the TTC tested live nerve agents such as VX in Panama, and in 1993 stored depleted uranium projectiles on the isthmus without notifying the Panamanian government.
But the TTC is moving operations involving weapons and soldiers to other areas, outgoing TTC director Graham Stullenbarger told Panamá Update. TTC may contract some civilians in Panama for temporary technical services or "go back on a safari [visiting] basis," Stullenbarger said. Asked where the TTC's permanent location will be, he said that "Guam is a candidate for sure. All the Pacific islands are." He added that if Green Berets and Navy Seals now stationed in Panama move to Puerto Rico, it "makes it more attractive" for the soldier tests TTC conducts.
Congress Escalates the Drug War
Anticipating the collapse of talks with Panama, the House of Representatives passed legislation on September 16 that includes $300 million "for military construction and land acquisition" that would "establish an airbase for use for support of counternarcotics operations in the Southern Caribbean, Northern South America, and the Eastern Pacific." The Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act gives geographic boundaries for locating the airbase outside the contintental United States -- in the Caribbean, Central America or Colombia. The legislation funds a grab bag of drug war programs for equipping and training U.S. and Latin American police and military forces, at a cost of $2.3 billion over three years. Senate Democrats reportedly may force the bill to be tabled, however.
Before its summer recess Congress approved a military construction bill which included $8.8 million for building a school on Fort Buchanan and $9.6 million for "operational facilities" at Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, both in Puerto Rico. Although it already hosts a U.S. airbase, Honduras is unlikely as a site for the "counter-drug center," according to a leading Honduran anti-drug official, for the same reasons as Panama didn't want "military bases." Sosa, who heads Honduras' National Commission against Drug Trafficking, said that "negotiations for a counter-drug center in Honduras would very probably run into the same problems they did in Panama," such as whether the center would be a police or military entity. "Honduras also would probably consult with Panama about its experience in negotiating this with the United States, as well as with other countries in the region, such as Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Argentina," Sosa said.
Senator Jesse Helms held hearings in June on the failing negotiations for a military presence in Panama, but has not made further political hay out of the failure to reach an agreement. He even praised President Clinton's negotiators, and appeared content to blame the impasse on Panama.
What Led to the Base Talks' Collapse?
Last Christmas Eve, Panama and the United States announced an "agreement in principle" on a "counter-drug center" that would keep several thousand U.S. troops in Panama for 12 years, ostensibly to monitor international drug trafficking and train militaries from the region in counter-drug operations. The draft agreement, which was published in Mexico in January, prohibited Panama from resorting to international bodies such as the United Nations in case of a conflict with the United States over the center, and included other missions besides anti-drug operations, such as "logistical support" in the region.
According to then Foreign Affairs Minister Arias, both governments agreed to subject any agreement to an inner council. In Panama's case, this council objected to the agreement. Another Panamanian source said the council -- which included figures from outside the ruling PRD -- "attacked it so strongly, they tore it apart."
Arias then travelled to Washington, where he met with drug czar Barry McCaffrey and National Security Advisor Samuel Berger and offered two options -- end the negotiations, or renegotiate sections that Panama found objectionable. An unclassified Pentagon report of that meeting declared that "US position (as stated by Sandy Berger) is that we will not renegotiate the agreement and will blame the GOP if negotiations end now."
Panama then rewrote the agreement, but the talks never overcame the substantive differences over jurisdiction for crimes by U.S. soldiers, whether the center would carry out missions unrelated to the drug war, and the agreement's duration.
"The problem is that your government is so stingy," said a Panamanian close to the negotiations. "If they'd shown a little concern and sensitivity, this agreement would have been done years ago." Now, the source said, any Panamanian who tried to take an agreement to a referendum in Panama "would be destroyed."
"Both sides made the mistake of centering everything in the post-1999 relationship in the [counter-drug] center," reflected a U.S. military official. Without the center, he said, everything after December 31, 1999 creates "panic."
Sources: La PrensaI 8/3; El Panamá América 8/1, 9/13; Inside the Pentagon 9/10, 9/17; SouthCom and Ft. Buchanan Public Affairs; interviews with Panamanian and U.S. government officials; FY1999 Defense Authorization Act; Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act; Washington Post 7/12/98; Pentagon e-mail, 1/98.
Where Will U.S. Troops in Panama Go?Military Element Future Location # personnel Mission
U.S. Army South - headquarters and troops Puerto Rico: Fort Buchanan, Fort Allen, Camp Santiago, Isla Grande - being "downsized" 300 - 4,000 troops U.S. military's operational arm for Caribbean, Central & South America & Mexico Special Operations Command South Puerto Rico: Roosevelt Roads about 280 troops Trains militaries from Central & South America in military tactics Helicopters/air element Honduras: Palmerola Air Base (proposed) about 50 troops General air support to military Naval Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School probably mainland United States N.A. Trains U.S. Latin American naval troops in riverine tactics, especially for use in drug war Howard Air Base - F-16 fighter jets, AWACs radar equipment, refuelling tanker planes, associated flight crews Uncertain - Southern Command favors Puerto Rico; Air Force (which makes decisions) considering bases in Florida; House of Representatives approved funds to move operations to Caribbean, Central America or Colombia 1,000 - 2,000 troops Regional surveillance, counter-drug monitoring, search and rescue, general air support Joint Inter-Agency Task Force-South Key West, Florida a few dozen staff Data control center for drug interdiction/surveillance U.S. Army Tropic Test Center possibly to Pacific (perhaps Guam) or Puerto Rico, broken into smaller parts about 30 civilian staff Tests military equipment and weapons for effects of tropical climate on functioning