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Spain's Judicial Police maintain a special section to deal with kidnapping and extrortion against Spaniards wherever in the world they may take place, and recently in published reports in Europa Press and El Panama America based on that office's reports it has been confirmed that the January kidnapping of the Dr. José Vicente Colastra and his son Sergio Colastra from Playa de Guayabito in the Darien's Jaque district was the work of Colombia's leftist FARC rebels. The Colastras were taken to Colombia and, according to the Spanish authorities, FARC demanded a ransom for their release. After 76 days of captivity the Colastras were returned to Panama on April 7. The police report did not say whether a ransom was paid.

The telephone communications between the kidnappers and the Colastra family by which ransom demands were made and responded to passed through a US-owned telecommunications satellite, and for this reason the American FBI was brought in to assist with the international investigation.

Upon the Colastra's return to Panama, they were questioned by our police and the Ministry of Government and Justice declared the matter a "closed case." The Public Ministry --- Panama's prosecutors and Judicial Technical Police (PTJ) --- have expressed a different attitude, but in any case there has been no announcement of any criminal charges against the Colombians who came into Panama and abducted the Colastras.

Over the years Panama has been attacked by irregular Colombian forces on a number of occasions, more often and with a higher death toll by the right wing AUC paramilitaries but also on occasion by FARC. We have also had cross-border attacks by "bandoleros," heavily armed Colombian gangs operating in paramilitary fashion but with ordinary criminal rather than political motives. Even in attacks in which Panamanian citizens have been killed, this country has never pressed criminal charges against paramilitary or guerrilla invaders.

Both FARC and the AUC smuggle weapons through Panama and maintain relationships with drug traffickers who pass contraband through our territory. It has also long been rumored that these deadly foes also launder their money here, take vacations here and even occasionally do their grocery shopping in this country. In a head-on struggle between Panama's National Police and either FARC or the AUC, the odds are that Panama would lose. It is also doubtful that any of our jails or prisons would be secure enough to hold a FARC or AUC prisoner against a determined military assault aimed at his or her escape.

Historically, Panama's approach to Colombia's civil conflict had been one of official neutrality, with a certain degree of tacit tolerance for occasional incursions of belligerent forces across our borders. During the Moscoso administration this policy shifted to vocal support for the Plan Colombia promoted by the governments in Bogota and Washington and a series of actions in support of the AUC. The Torrijos administration has gone back to a more traditional neutral approach.

Although it is usually portrayed abroad as simply a matter of Teddy Roosevelt wanting a canal and plotting to separate Panama from Colombia in 1903 to get it, there had been a long-standing movement for autonomy or independence from Colombia which regained force in the wake of the 1900-1903 Thousand Day War, a Colombian political dispute in which much of Panama was devastated. Since that time one of the few unifying notions of Panamanian national identity is that we are not Colombians and we are not involved in their chronic political violence. However, there are times when our neighbors just won't leave this country alone and those create delicate problems for our government.