U.S. MAY MOVE ANTI-DRUG BASE FROM PANAMA
Reuters News Service

KEY WEST, Fla. -- The United States is preparing to move its nerve center
in the war against the Latin American drug trade to Florida as Panama balks
at having U.S. troops stay there, a senior official said Friday.

The Panama-based U.S. anti-drug task force, which targets South American
narcotics production, is to merge with its counterpart in Key West, which
covers trafficking in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, White House
anti-drugs adviser Barry McCaffrey said.

A long-envisaged multinational anti-drugs center involving U.S. and Latin
American personnel might also be set up in Florida instead of Panama as
planned, he said.

Under a 1977 treaty, all U.S. troops will leave Panama -- a strategic U.S.
bastion for nearly a century -- and pass control of the canal to the
Panamanian government on Dec. 31, 1999.

The United States was negotiating with Panama to turn the Howard Air Force
base in the canal zone into a multinational anti-drug center, with
intelligence gathering facilities, air power and 2,000 U.S. troops, plus
soldiers from other countries.

In July, however, Washington said the talks were at an impasse over the
length of an agreement that would allow U.S. troops to stay in Panama
beyond the end of 1999. Panama will not offer more than four years but the
center wants longer.

"The current situation looks very unforgiving," McCaffrey told reporters at
a conference of U.S. and Latin American military and civilian officials
involved in the anti-drugs war.

"I've felt that way for the last year so my own role has been to encourage
an accelerating effort to ensure that on Dec. 31, as we leave Panama, that
the counter drugs efforts of the United States don't grind to a halt.

"We cannot walk away from 800 million people in the hemisphere."

U.S. officials were consulting with their allies on temporary locations for
forward intelligence operations, he said.

Checked-by: Pat Dolan