"State-sponsored terrorism" is a well-worn cliché, one that has survived because it so often reflects reality. Then there are governments that, if they don't actually sponsor terrorism, condone it. Mireya Moscoso's regime is one of those. At the very least, Mireya condones terrorism against Panama.

Colombia's AUC paramilitary is on the Bush administration's list of international terrorist groups and prosecutors in Bogota have obtained indictments against Carlos Castaño and some of its other leaders for a string of grisly massacres. Washington has formally asked for Castaño's extradition to face drug charges in the United States.

However, the AUC is a major component of Plan Colombia, which is financed by the United States, carried out under the direction of US military advisors and supported by US-paid mercenaries. Across vast rural regions of Colombia, AUC death squads move into areas where leftist guerrillas operate, massacre civilians and force most of the remaining non-combatants to flee, and then come the DynCorp spray planes, the Colombian regular forces and the US military advisors. Quite often the Colombian Army blocks roads in and out of communities under attack by the AUC and provides aerial cover and surveillance while the paramilitaries, who are really fond of dismemberment, do their dirty work. The pattern has been repeated far too many times to be coincidental.

The AUC has also repeatedly attacked Panama, Venezuela and Ecuador. The government in Bogota has done nothing to restrain such acts of war.

So now the AUC has come into the Darien villages of Paya and Pucuro to assassinate those indigenous communities' leaders and to burn down houses. Carlos Castaño has bragged about it, just like he has boasted about stealing helicopters from Panama, assassinating a suspected FARC gun runner at the old Clayton riding stables and conducting smuggling operations through Panamanian territory. In this latest outrage against Panama, Castaño boasted that his thugs encountered three journalists during their assassination mission into Panama and abducted them "for their own safety."

Neither President Moscoso nor Attorney General Sossa nor Police Chief Barés saw fit to do their obvious duty. These officials owe it to the Panamanian people to take Mr. Castaño at his word, and, in view of the acts committed by men under his command within this country, charge him as the intellectual author of air piracy, murder, arson and kidnapping. None of that has been done.

Mireya Moscoso, whose government allows US mercenaries to conduct Plan Colombia support operations out of Tocumen, says that the Colombian government is Panama's friend. She has urged Bogota to reinforce its armed presence along the border with Panama. The problem is that the AUC itself is the Colombian government's armed presence in the border area.

Bogota is now engaged in "peace talks" with Castaño, in which one of the offers being made to the AUC is the dropping of American charges against its leaders.

Meanwhile, the OAS has issued a report about a huge shipment of arms from the Nicaraguan police arsenal to the AUC. This shipment, handled by Israeli arms merchants based in Panama and Guatemala, was on paper a transfer of arms from the Nicaraguan police to the Panamanian police. The US ambassador in Nicaragua, Oliver Garza, approved the shipment and now says that he thought it was headed to Panama. The arms entered the Colombian port of Turbo, where customs officials looked the other way. The OAS investigators were not able to talk to one of the Israeli arms merchants in custody here, because the Panamanian government would not allow it. The report faults Nicaragua for failing to follow international weapons trading norms.

Let us recall, for a moment, the sordid past of OAS Secretary General César Gaviria. When Gaviria was the president of Colombia, his government and the US Embassy in Bogota maintained a close working relationship with Los PEPES (People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar), a death squad organized by Carlos Castaño and his late brother. Los PEPES was the organizational predecessor of the AUC.

So now we have an OAS report indicating that Nicaragua is a state sponsor of AUC terrorism. The facts are that the Colombian government was directly involved in that arms shipment to the AUC, the US government was at least negligently involved in aiding that gun running scam, and if nothing else the Panamanian government played the role of accessory after the fact by obstructing the investigation. There also remain serious questions about the Israeli role. The OAS report is grossly inadequate, to the point that "cover-up" is not an unwarranted description.

And let's look at the rest of the Moscoso record with respect to the AUC:

• In 2001, a series of raids led to several arrests and the confiscation of several planes and real estate in Veraguas, Chame and Panama City. Police said that the Colombian citizens they nabbed were AUC members, who were running support operations for the paramilitary out of this country. On Christmas Eve of that year, when few people were paying attention to the news, the suspects were released and their property was returned, because prosecutors said that while they knew that they were dealing with AUC members, they could not prove any specific crime. When any person known to be a FARC member is apprehended here, that person is taken into custody, questioned by Panamanian and US authorities, then handed over to the Colombian government. The alleged AUC members arrested in 2001, however, weren't even declared persona non grata and obliged to leave Panama.

• The Colombian border town of Jurado, now dominated by FARC, has for several years been hotly contested between leftist guerrillas and rightist paramilitaries. Civilians fleeing the Jurado area into Panama to avoid the AUC's wrath have been treated as criminals and repatriated to Colombia. Civilians fleeing from the FARC into Panama have been allowed to stay here.

• Police Chief Barés and officials from the Ministry of Government and Justice and the Foreign Ministry have, in the face of repeated AUC invasions of Panama, repeatedly denied that there is a problem. In the wake of an earlier AUC attack, former Government and Justice Minister Aníbal Salas, now a member of the Supreme Court, cynically suggested that the people of Paya and Pucuro organize a neighborhood watch group.

There is no doubt that Panama is under attack by state-sponsored terrorists. The most important question that Panamanians need to raise about the situation is whether Mireya Moscoso's administration is one of the AUC's state sponsors.

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Muriel Strode

If you have no confidence in self you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence you have won even before you started.

Marcus Garvey

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Katherine Patterson