Old munitions again

The US government has said it won’t discuss the unexploded ordnance left on the former firing ranges here anymore, and Mireya has thrown in the towel on that one. The Americans have offered a program to clean leftover chemical weapons from San Jose Island in the Perlas Archipelago, but it seems that the Moscoso administration is interested in cash rather than a clean-up and so Panama has rejected that offer. The two situations arise under two different treaties: in the former Canal Zone there was a treaty commitment for the US to remove all hazards “insofar as is practicable,” which the government in Washington says was done; while with respect to chemical arms the Chemical Weapons Convention to which both Panama and the United States are parties generally imposes a duty to clean on the country that left a mess on another nation’s territory, with varying provisions for different epochs when the arms were abandoned.

John Lindsay-Poland, a San Francisco-based activist with the Fellowship of Reconciliation peace group, was recently in Panama both to promote the Spanish edition of his book “Emperors in the Jungle,” and on October 27 he appeared with several Panamanians who have been involved with leftover munitions issues at a panel discussion at Excedra Books.

Lindsay-Poland brought a big black plastic box full of documents obtained through the US Freedom of Information Act with him to Panama. The documents will be deposited at the Biblioteca Nacional, but other groups will make copies for their own use and to ensure that the material doesn’t disappear with some change of government.

The latest find from US archives could be an issue under both the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Panama Canal Treaty.

It seems that the United States was testing VX nerve gas mines in Veracruz in the mid-60s. The toxins from the tested mines dissipated and decomposed within days of their release into the air, but the nerve agent in any leftover mines would still be quite deadly. The problem is that while there are documents describing the disposal of some of the unused mines by encasing them in concrete and dumping them in the ocean, the records for much of this ordnance are missing.

Lindsay-Poland believes that some of the mines were buried somewhere in the former Canal Zone, and points out the irony that “missing VX” was one of the arguments that the Bush administration used in favor of going to war with Iraq. He also noted that previous requests for information about chemical weapons reasonably believed to have been buried in the old Canal Zone have been denied on the basis that release of such information could lead to terrorists digging them up and using them --- at the same time that Washington seeks to assure Panama that there really isn’t any danger.

Rodrigo Noriega, who worked with the Foreign Ministry on environmental demilitarization issues during the Pérez Balladares administration, noted a lot of intragovernmental rivalry and ignorance of the issues involved when he was in government, and credited Lindsay-Poland’s research with helping Panama to understand. “John’s work let us see the issue from the US world view,” he said.

The former deputy administrator of the Panama Canal, Fernando Manfredo, was blunt about what happened. “Information was deliberately hidden for many years,” he alleged. “We know of a number of documents, and we know where they are, but we can’t get them.”

Daniel Delgago Diamante, a former Panama Defense Forces colonel who represented the Pérez Balladares administration on a joint committee to review firing range issues, recounted the story of how the talks failed. “We didn’t have experience with this,” he said, and by the time that Panama began to realize the extent of the problem, the Americans were declaring the case closed. But “the issue continues unresolved,” said Delgado, who advises the Martín Torrijos campaign on security issues.

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More information unearthed about CZ chemical weapons tests