Panama upset by U.S. explosives left in Canal Zone

CNN December 5, 1999 Panama upset by U.S. explosives left in Canal Zone

                  ESCOBAL, Panama (AP) -- For about 70 years, U.S. servicemen trained
                  with artillery in the Panama jungle, blasting away at hills in the rainforest and
                  leaving an occasional dud shrouded beneath the trees.

                  Of all the properties the United States is turning over to Panama this year,
                  that unexploded ordinance -- UXO in military slang -- is the one Panama is
                  least eager to accept.

Three firing ranges -- Empire, Balboa West and Pina, with a total of 37,300
acres -- were turned over to a reluctant Panama in July.

                  Panama has continued to squabble with U.S. officials about who, if anyone,
                  should clean up the 7,700 acres that remain off-limits because of unexploded
                  artillery shells.

                  "If they had started 10 years ago they could have cleaned up everything
                  except perhaps some small areas," insists Manfredo Amador, Panama's
                  negotiator for the issue.

                  The fight is one of the few that has created bitterness during the U.S. pullout
                  from the Canal Zone, which will culminate with the handover of the canal
                  itself on December 31.

                  Amador claims the U.S. side dragged its heels and did much less here than it
                  did to remove hazards at decommissioned firing ranges in Hawaii and
                  California.

                  U.S. officials say they have done all they can to clean up the ranges without
                  destroying the rainforest and endangered animals they had been bombarding
                  for several decades.

Environmental issue?

What remains off limits is only 2 percent of the area the United States is
returning to Panama under the 1977 canal treaty, they note.

                  "No technology exists to guarantee 100 percent removal of UXO without
                  destroying the area's environment," W. Lewis Amselem, leader of the U.S.
                  negotiating team on the issue, said in a speech last year.

                  U.S. officials say cleanup would mean stripping away the forest, creating
                  increased erosion and silt into the canal and imperiling the habitat of
                  endangered species.

Amador insists that even if there were cuts in the forest, "the vegetation
covers it very quickly."

                  Air Force Col. Dave Hunt, director of treaty implementation for the U.S.
                  military, said American troops "did everything we could" to find unexploded
                  shells.

                  He said the search was complicated by iron-bearing rocks in the area that
                  set off metal detectors. Even so, "We found 6,600 items of UXO. We dug a
                  hole and blew it up."

'More dangerous than a viper'

For people in this rural town near the Atlantic coast, it's a neighborhood
issue.

                  "You can't hunt, you can't do anything, because it's dangerous ... more
                  dangerous than a viper," said Daniel Ortega, who was chatting with friends
                  on the porch of a local restaurant.

But some people still venture past the warning signs around the Pina range a
few miles away to collect scrap metal from the old shells.

                  Local residents suspect it was one of those collectors who brought out an
                  unexploded shell eight years ago and left it in a vacant lot in town, where
                  children sometimes played.

                  "I was there. They were playing and I heard the explosion," said Georgina
                  Magallan. Her 6-year-old son, Luis Carlos, was killed by the blast. "My son
                  would have been 14 on July 17," she said.

                  A primary school teacher, Magallan now helps teach children about the
                  dangers of the explosives, though it was never proven that the device that
                  killed her son came from the range.

U.S. officials admit there have been seven confirmed deaths due to
explosives from the ranges, all due to scrap-metal or souvenir dealers.

With the ranges now turned over to Panama, they say the Panamanian
government is responsible for them.

                  Amador disputes that. He says there is no time limit to the treaty clause in
                  which the United States promised to clean up the ranges "insofar as may be
                  practicable." He also suggests some private companies have shown greater
                  skill at removing explosives than the U.S. Army.