U.S. DRUG ACCORD WITH PANAMA HITS SNAG

PANAMA -- Late last year, the president of Panama announced that his
government had "reached an agreement" with Washington on a drug
interdiction center that would permit American troops to stay here after
the United States gives up control of the Panama Canal and the last of the
military bases around it on Dec. 31, 1999. Only "some details" needed to be
worked out, a State Department spokesman said.

But four months later, the accord has clearly unraveled. President Ernesto
Perez Balladares has denounced the document as "an ill-conceived pile of
paper," a referendum on it scheduled for July has been indefinitely
postponed, and at a news conference here this month, the chief American and
Panamanian negotiators said they did not know if they would be able to
produce a replacement.

Neither government has made public the text of the accord to set up a
"Multinational Counter-Narcotics Center" at what is today Howard Air Force
Base, on the west bank of the Panama Canal.

At a news briefing in Washington on April 16, State Department spokesman
James Rubin said that "for internal reasons the government of Panama has
demanded extensive textual changes" and that "we have agreed to some
restructuring and clarifications."

A draft of the document recently published in the Mexican newspaper
Excelsior drew intense criticism here, making clear at least some of the
objections that have forced Perez Balladares to reverse himself. The chief
sore point is a provision that would permit the 2,000 or so American
soldiers expected to be stationed here as part of the center to engage in
"other missions."

To some within the governing party, and elsewhere in Latin America, that
would give the United States a legal basis to intervene militarily in the
region at its discretion. Language that allows, but does not require,
countries taking part in the center -- the United States obviously most of
all -- to share the intelligence they gather with other members has been
criticized equally.

"The text had in it things that have nothing to do with the drug war, but
which are functions typical of a military base of a great power,"
complained Ricardo Arias Calderon, a former vice president.

Perez Balladares has been out of the country and unavailable for comment,
but in remarks to the Reuters news agency before his departure he said the
center "has to be exclusively for the fight on drugs and cannot be a base
with a fig leaf."

Diplomats here said reservations about the accord had been expressed by
several countries that Panama has sounded out about joining in the center,
which include Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and
Venezuela. "What they wanted was for all the rest of us simply to sign on
to an agreement that the two of them have negotiated, which doesn't exactly
coincide with our notion of multilateral," one Latin American envoy said.
In an interview here, Jorge Ritter, minister of canal affairs and Panama's
chief negotiator in the talks with the United States, said the two
governments were now "defining the text" of an agreement. He declined to
discuss what details remained to be worked out and said he could not
predict if the differences could be overcome.

"We agree on concepts, and now are working on the text," Ritter said. "It
has taken longer than we anticipated, but that's where we are." Asked if
the Panamanian government, which initially said it would not negotiate past
1997, was committed to a final deadline, he replied, "We have no date." For
its part, the United States, clearly impatient, now suggests that Panama
may not be the only acceptable site for the proposed drug interdiction
center, saying that Honduras or American military bases in Florida are
alternatives. "We prefer to have it in Panama, but if we can't nail this
down soon, we may have to locate it elsewhere," Rubin said. What has been
largely overlooked in the dispute is that the United States and six South
American countries are already cooperating in a drug detection and
interdiction program operated out of Howard Air Force Base. Since June, the
program has been monitoring air and sea shipments of cocaine out of South
America, using the radar and aircraft of the United States and the other
participating countries.

"We are the pointed end of the spear" in the war against drugs in what is
known as "the source zone," said Brig. Gen. Howard DeWolf, director of the
task force. Operating from Panama, he added, offers practical advantages
that none of the other suggested locations can match. "Panama provides us a
presence and a platform in the region, a steppingstone to forward deploy
down range" in South America, he said. "We can be located in Miami, but
that would not be the same as being truly engaged with our partners in the
region."