Rumsfeld's visit here

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld came to Panama on November 13, en route between a ceremony in El Salvador honoring that country’s army for its role in the Salvadoran civil war of the 1980s (which ended in a stalemate and negotiated ceasefire after some 79,000 deaths) and a gathering in Quito of defense ministers from around the Americas.

Rumsfeld was greeted at Tocumen Airport by an American delegation headed by US Ambassador Linda E. Watt and a Panamanian delegation led by Government and Justice Minister Héctor Alemán, and during his two-day stopover held formal meetings with Alemán, President Torrijos and Vice-President and Foreign Minister Samuel Lewis Navarro. He also visited the Miraflores Locks and talked with Panama Canal security officials. According to the US Embassy website, the main purpose of Rumsfeld’s visit was “to review Panama-US cooperation in regional security in anticipation of the Sixth Hemispheric Defense Ministerial to be held in Ecuador November 16-21.”

That subject is anything but innocuous, and moreover, the later summit was a low-keyed showcase for growing political differences between the United States and most Latin American countries.

The Panama Defense Forces were abolished in the wake of the 1989 US invasion, to be replaced by a series of police forces, the most important of which are the National Police, National Maritime Service and National Air Service, all part of the Ministry of Government and Justice. Under the Ministry of the Presidency there is the Institutional Protective Service, which both guards the president and cabinet members and trains as an elite intelligence and anti-terrorist unit. The nation’s main detective squad, the Judicial Technical Police, are part of the Public Ministry and exist under a complex arrangement by which authority is shared by the nation’s courts and prosecutors. The Panama Canal Authority has its own security force. The traffic cops are part of both the Land Transportation and Transit Authority and the National Police. Under a 1994 constitutional amendment which has never been implemented, in the event of war or similar national emergency Panama is to be defended by a civilian militia under the command of the National Police.

The 22-year military dictatorship, which was led during most of its tenure by President Martín Torrijos’s father, still casts a long shadow over Panamanian politics. The strong anti-militarist reaction is the main reason, for example, why despite its constitution Panama has never made arrangements to train a civilian militia and establish arsenals from which to arm them in the event of an emergency. The appearance of cops in camouflage fatigues with painted faces and carrying military weapons in the recent Independence Day and Flag Day parades, for another example, elicited a certain amount of public criticism to the effect that Panama is or may be remilitarizing by way of converting the police forces into an army.

Complicating such concerns have been repeated observations from Washington that the United States is ill prepared to fight invasions of the Darien by Colombia’s leftist FARC rebels --- which inevitabley fail to mention that in the past decade almost all of the Colombian attacks on Panama have come not from FARC but from the rightist AUC paramilitary --- and a sharp increase in the amount of US military aid for Panama in the 2005 budget. Rumsfeld’s emphasis throughout his Latin American trip that regional military forces must be strengthened to fight terrorism and criminal activity also increased suspicions that the US agenda is one of military coups against elected governments that the Bush administration dislikes and bloody repression of all political forces that disagree with Washington’s “War on Terror.”

The US Embassy here emphatically denies the remilitarization charge. Most of the details of this fiscal year’s increase in US military aid to Panama work in favor of this argument.

When the dry season comes, this country will see the return to the isthmus of Americans in uniform, to carry out National Guard construction and health care maneuvers. Also as part of US military aid to Panama, the Americans recently donated more than $100,000 worth of supplies and equipment to our SINAPROC disaster relief agency, which due to recent floods and several years of budget difficulties has been scraping along with depleted resources.

One part of the increased American assistance is the training of Panamanian cops in military subjects at the School of the Americas (which has changed its name but not its function) at Fort Benning in Georgia.br>
The big-ticket item in this year’s military assistance package, however, is the National Guard maneuvers.

So why would the National Guard hold manuevers in Panama? Yes, disseminating the messages that the United States is Panama’s friend and the US Armed Forces are cool is one of the objectives. Mainly, however, it’s because the people who will be coming to practice in impoverished Panamanian communities early next year are engineering and combat support units, and US law prohibits military construction projects within the United States because they would be seen as competition for private sector businesses and workers. Moreover, National Guard medical units need to be prepared to deal with tropical diseases and their doctors are unlikely to see patients with maladies like malaria or dengue in their home states.

It was not possible for Rumsfeld --- or any other visiting US government official --- to allay all the suspicions about American intentions that are abroad in Panamanian society. To name the most prominent irritating factors, the war in Iraq is unpopular here, and so is any suggestion that this country needs to take sides in our Colombian neighbors’ long-running carnage.

Panamanians’ fears of remilitarization have their analogues in most other Latin American countries, which also have bad experiences with military regimes that their people would rather put behind them. Thus in Quito, Argentina did not offer to change its laws barring the use of the army for law enforcement activities, no government threatened its internal dissidents with a military crackdown and there was no big line of countries eager to sign up as Plan Colombia supporters. The Bush administration’s critics in the region held onto their positions, but they also discretely held their tongues.

However, all disagreement were not kept beneath the surface. At a press conference at the Palacio de las Garzas, Rumsfeld reopened and aggravated an old wound in US-Panamanian relations. In response to a Telemetro reporter’s question about the removal of old US and allied chemical weapons from San Jose Island, the defense secretary announced the Bush administration’s hardened line in that long-standing bilateral dispute.

“I am advised that the status of it is that the US, apparently, has assumed its obligation under the treaty and that the matter has been closed,” Rumsfeld said.

This United Nations treaty, to which both the United States and Panama are signatories, requires countries that have abandoned usable chemical weapons in the territory of other states to remove these hazards. San Jose Island, in the Perlas Archipelago, was used from 1943 through 1947 by US, Canadian and British forces , which tested poison gas bombs and shells there. Artifacts remain.

In the case of an old mustard gas bomb left out in the jungle, the explosive charge would likely but not necessarily have been neutralized by moisture since the end of chemical weapons tests on the island. However, the unbroken flask and its contents, if broken and exposed to the air, would emit a cloud of mustard gas that’s as dangerous as it was the day when it left the factory, and that arguably makes such ordnance “usable” for purposes of the treaty.

Empirical evidence suggests that about 10 percent of all bombs and shells fail to detonate, and that in a jungle setting this unexploded ordnance tends to bury itself in the mud, sometimes working its way back to the surface through mudslides, erosion or the pressure of growing tree roots. Things lying on the surface of a jungle island, moreover, are likely to over the course of decades be concealed by plant growth. There are records of the numbers and types of munitions used on San Jose Island --- more than anything else, mustard gas was used, many thousands of times --- and it can thus be expected that the island is littered with hundreds of old unexploded chemical bombs and shells, most of them buried close to the surface.

With the mathematical probabilities and environmental realities mentioned above to be kept in mind, only seven unexploded chemical bombs or shells have been found and identified by international inspectors as such on the surface of San Jose Island.

During the Moscoso administration the United States and Panama dickered over the issue of a San Jose Island cleanup, with the Americans arguing that the problem is minor and the Panamanians claiming that the old munitions prevent the island’s full development for tourist projects. The United States made a “last best offer” to give Panama the equipment and training needed for Panamanians to remove the seven identified items, but only on condition that Panama would renounce all claims with respect to any other chemical munitions that might be found. That offer was rejected.

In an opinion column in La Prensa Juan Méndez S., who was one of the Moscoso administration’s negotiators about this subject, argued that “Panama can not accept a proposal that obliges Panamanians to destroy dangerous chemical weapons when, according to the terms of the Convention, it’s up to the United States to do so.” He added that “It worries me to think that United States troops, at an exorbitant cost in lives and resources, have traveled half way around the world in search of chemical weapons that don’t exist. However, when it’s up to the United States to comply with its commitment under the Chemical Weapons Convention, in the case of Panama it declines to do so.”

A source at the US Embassy told The Panama News that the American offer was “generous” and “final,” that the Moscoso administration knew it to be such, and thus after the prior administration’s rejection of the proposal the matter is closed.

But American antiwar activist John Lindsay-Poland, who has done extensive research on weapons testing here and is the author of Emperors in the Jungle, a history of US military activity in Panama, calls the position announced by Rumsfeld “an abrogation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.” He added that “couching US compliance with the CWC in terms of US ‘offers’ and Panamanian ‘refusals’ makes it sounds like the United States did not have clear and strict obligations under the convention.”

After Rumsfeld’s visit the Torrijos administration reaffirmed that it adheres to the policy of the prior two administration, which insists that the Americans find and remove all chemical weapons on San Jose Island. However, no new Panamanian initiatives, such as a possible lawsuit before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, were announced.

Despite that note of discord, another old US-Panamanian argument appeared to have been put more firmly into the past during Rumsfeld’s visit.

In the debate over the ratification of the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties, and among some conservative US political circles to this day, the assertion has been made that Panama is not capable of defending the canal. However, in statements both at the press conference and during his visit to the Miraflores Locks, the US defense secretary expressed confidence that this country, with American assistance, has interposed strong defenses against a possible attack on the Panama Canal.

The American interest in canal defense is not only the economic concern of one of the waterway’s principal users, but also has a legal basis in the Treaty of Permanent Neutrality, one of the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties, which gives the United States a right to defend the Panama Canal against attack.

At the press conference Government and Justice Minister Alemán pointed to recent multinational naval and coast guard maneuvers in Panamanian waters, which had as their premise the interception of terrorists intent on attacking the canal, as an example of the waterway’s enhanced anti-terrorist defenses. “Be assured that the appropriate investments have been made,” he added.

The full extent of the canal defense effort is not and will not be a matter of public record, as there are surely precautions about which the governments of both Panama and the United States would prefer that Osama bin Laden not know. However, it is known that after the September 2001 attacks on the United States security was tightened, including by a system of electronic surveillance designed to allow canal security personnel to track all vessels in and around canal waters, the installation of more remote controlled video cameras, and the demolition of buildings and closure of areas from which somebody with a rocket launcher might easily attack ships in the canal. These measures were undertaken in consultation with US defense experts.

It appears that during Rumsfeld’s visit here the Torrijos administration did what most of the South American governments that have policy differences with the United States did later at the defense ministers’ summit in Quito. Points of agreement were noted and rows over known points of disagreement were avoided. But in the end it seems that there were few if any buyers, either here or elsewhere in Latin America, of the more controversial aspects of the Bush administration’s policy toward our region.

Also in this section:
Rumsfeld's visit
University of Panama plebiscite
Mireya stripped of her immunity
Assassination unsettles Venezuela
Panama News Briefs

news

Rumsfeld visit rekindles old debates