PANAMA - A NEW BASE FOR A LOST WAR?

HOWARD AIR FORCE BASE -- The F-16 fighters swoop down from the sky on to
Howard United States Air Force Base much like the tropical birds that
occasionally fly into their engines. They taxi smoothly to join the rest of
the hardware stacked on the tarmac at this base at the Pacific end of the
Panama Canal. But no such smooth flight or landing is in sight for the
negotiations between the United States and Panama on plans for a
"multilateral counter-narcotics centre"-CMA, from its initials in
Spanish-encompassing Howard and other American bases after December 31st 1999.

That date was laid down in a 1977 treaty as the end of the long history of
the United States' military involvement in Panama. The issue that has kept
the two countries haggling for two years now is what installations, if any,
the Americans may after all retain. They have several reasons for wanting
to stay. One is security for the canal, another Colombia. The one being
trumpeted by the Clinton administration is drugs.

The CMA already exists, though not in multilateral guise, in the Joint
Interagency Task Force South, an American intelligence outfit that uses
ground and airborne radar and other means to monitor suspected drug
flights. Its mission is to work with other countries' security services to
"deter, degrade and disrupt" the production and shipment of drugs in the
Caribbean, Central and South America.

The JIATF-South is active enough. But is what it terms the policy of
"engaging in the source zone" doing any good? JIATF-South officials say
that drugs worth $1.2 billion were intercepted with its aid in 1997. That
sounds a lot, but it is peanuts compared with the United States' estimated
annual imports of $30 billion of cocaine alone, much of it from South America.

True, the cost is not huge. Some $155m, around a fifth of the United
States' Southern Command (Southcom) budget is now spent on the anti-drugs
war, plus whatever millions more go to government in the region for the
same purpose. The yearly costs of the CMA, if it happens, are put at $60m.

The war often borders on black comedy. Packages of cocaine and marijuana
weighing up to 100 kilos-220 pounds-are regularly washed up on Panamanian
beaches. Four months ago, one came ashore right next to Howard base, on the
beach of the adjacent fishing town of Veracruz, where smuggling, say its
residents, is rife. These packages are thrown, to avoid seizure, from
aircraft and boats which JIATF-South is "interdicting". So far, so
successful. Whether every finder of a package dutifully takes it to the
police is another question.

Some notable traffickers have met their demise thanks to Southcom. And not
only traffickers. In the early 1990s the Americans regularly tipped off
Peru's armed forces to force or shoot down suspected aircraft. Quite soon
the trigger-happy Peruvians had shot down more than 120 aircraft. One was a
Southcom C-130 on a clandestine reconnaissance mission.

Critics of the anti-drug war talk of "mission impossible". Colombia, for
instance, has some 500 authorised airfields and thousands of dirt
airstrips. The traffickers fly at night to avoid prying eyes, or at low
level to avoid prying radar. Some use Southcom's own radar transmissions
for guidance. In Colombia, where the trade has moved north since the
cracking of the Cali and Medellin mobs, the coastal cartels have a new
tool: fibreglass submarines.

So would the proposed CMA serve much purpose? Perhaps not. But a continued
military presence, under that name, might. The end of the cold war has not
much altered the function of the American bases. If they have been useful
since then-for activities ranging from air-sea rescue to air support for
Southcom operations-they still would, the Americans reckon.

Of the bases, Howard is the jewel in the crown. There are various radio
listening posts, a naval station and a jungle-warfare school. Three firing
ranges and a laboratory are used for testing weapons and equipment in
tropical conditions. It would be hard to reproduce this elsewhere: Panama
has just the climate the army needs, say those concerned. The
tropical-testing centre has become a sore point between the United States
and Panama. But one way or another-perhaps under a nominally private-sector
flag-it seems likely to survive, whether the CMA plan goes ahead or not.
How much of the rest could endure under a CMA guise is unclear. The
Americans think plenty could and should, and claim that a majority of the
Panamanian public, hand on wallet, thinks so too.

The result so far is deadlock. Even in Panama's government, whose chief,
President Ernesto Perez Balladares, dreamed up the CMA idea, it has lost
favour recently, especially after other Latin American countries consulted
in January-after all, this is meant to be a multilateral effort-criticised
it as a thinly disguised base for future American military interventions in
the region. Though Senator Jesse Helms shot his mouth off this month,
criticising Panama's refusal to bow to American wishes in his usual
imperial style, neither government's officials are saying much at this
sensitive moment: in two months, the referendum is due that will say yes or
no to Mr Balladares's plan for a constitutional change allowing him to run
for re-election. The CMA too may be put to a referendum.

Checked-by: Richard Lake