The National Security Center (NSC) is a right-wing think tank based in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, and is the single American conservative organization that pays the most attention to Panama. They were the first to sound the alarm about a Hong Kong-based company, Hutchison Whampoa, getting the concession to run the ports of Balboa and Cristobal, alleging that this puts what they describe as a Chinese government front in a position to make mischief with the Panama Canal.
Other groups, which have generally never bothered to come down here and check things out for themselves, have embellished the NSC’s complaint, at some extremes alleging that China runs the canal or that there are one million Chinese troops currently stationed in Panama. That sort of thing annoys the NSC, whose members sometimes get branded as nut cases because of other people’s paranoia.
The NSC frequently comes down to Panama in small groups for fact-finding missions. The delegations generally include the group’s director, Richard Delgaudio, one of members of their retired military officers’ advisory board and several conservative activists. They meet with a variety of people while here, not all of whom share their views, to keep tabs on events on the isthmus.
Last year the US Embassy was run by a chargé d’affaires, as the Bush administration had yet to nominate an ambassador. The NSC delegation didn’t get much time from the embassy.
However, just after they left the embassy received a stern protest from then-Foreign Minister (now presidential candidate) José Miguel Alemán, alleging an American plot to destabilize Panama. Named were the members of the NSC delegation and the people with whom they met, including this reporter.
Since then the Moscoso administration has made itself a laughing stock with several other lurid and improbable allegations of destabilization plots, Alemán transformed himself from foreign minister into a tiny blip on the political radar screen who will be doing well to win the Arnulfista nomination and finish a distant third in next year’s elections, and Bush has his woman, career diplomat Linda Watt, in position as the ambassador here.
And lo and behold, the NSC is getting far more respect than they did last year. They got a three-hour off-the-record meeting with Watt. The met with the number two woman at the Foreign Ministry and a number of other high-ranking Moscoso administration figures. They’re a lot more optimistic.
This year’s delegation included Major General Richard J. Anson (US Army retired), who back in the late 70s commanded US Army South and calls Panama “my favorite second home.”
“I like the smell of the breezes that are blowing here,” Anson said at a press conference at the Marriott Hotel. He likes Ambassador Watt, whom he said “fills a gap that has long required filling,” and thinks that US-Panamanian relations are “more positive” than they have been in many years.
“For the first time,” Anson said, “I hear that an American presence back in Panama would be acceptable.” He noted the popularity of the Nuevos Horizontes exercises that brought US National Guard and Reserve units here for engineering and health care practice, the US military advisors training Panamanian police in jungle warfare tactics at the former Fort Sherman and the Bush and Moscoso administration’s shared concerns about the civil war next door in Colombia. He said he approved of Watt’s efforts to emphasize security concerns, get the US more deeply involved in efforts to reduce the worst of Panama’s poverty and attract more private American investment to the isthmus.
Anson and the NSC would like to see a permanent US military presence reestablished in Panama, and he acknowledges that both the Panamanian and American governments have wishes and fears that need to be addressed. He gave as examples the disagreement over the uncleared firing ranges that the departing US military left behind, and differing economic interests over questions of international trade. The general thinks that a compromise that takes care of both countries’ main concerns is very possible if Panama and the United States sit down for some friendly and detailed negotiations.
“The initiative for starting these meetings should be with the United States,” General Anson concluded.
Also in this section:
Panama News Briefs
Nuevos Horizontes 2003
Conservative group gets different reception this year
A former political prisoner's tale
