Source: New York Times (NY) Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ Pubdate: April 26, 1998 Author: Larry Rohter 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."