Panama becomes bazaar for Central American weapons By Nayra Delgado PANAMA CITY, April 18 (Reuters) - Guns for cash or guns for drugs: Panama has become an arms bazaar for South American guerrillas and narcos looking to stock up on grenade launchers, high explosives or just plain machine guns. And officials say it is unlikely that Panama's hard-pressed border patrol will be able to do anything soon to stem the flow of weapons from formerly civil war-ravaged Central America to the hungry embrace of Colombian or Peruvian rebels. Panama's borders are ``an open current'' for the arms trade, said Gov. Miguel Fanovich of Chiriqui province, which nestles along the frontier with the small nation of Costa Rica. ``It's nothing new and nothing critical. Trafficking across the Costa Rican border is historical and difficult to stop,'' he said. In March, Panamanian security forces busted a major weapons smuggling ring that shipped arms dating back to Nicaragua's civil war a decade ago down to Panama's Darien province, a remote jungle area on Colombia's border. There the Soviet-made AK-47 automatic rifles, RPG-7 grenade launchers and C-4 explosives are bartered for cocaine or cash, officials say. The customers are suspected Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas or Colombia's Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army (ELN). Sometimes buyers from Peru's Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) or Tupac Amaru rebel groups might turn up to do some shopping. On other occasions the weapons are heading to Venezuela or Ecuador, or maybe they are just being bought by drug traffickers for their private armies or by South American gun smuggling gangs aiming to make a killing on resale elsewhere. ARMS CROSS POROUS COLOMBIAN BORDER Days before the Nicaraguan smuggling ring was broken up, Panamanian customs agents found 19 AK-47s hidden in a secret compartment of a pickup truck with Nicaraguan license plates heading south to the porous border with strife-torn Colombia. Panamanian authorities do not have up-to-date statistics on weapons seized or the amount of arms suspected of crossing the country's territory. But they say AK-47s and RPG-7s are the most common -- leftovers from millions of weapons floating around Central America in the aftermath of the 1980s wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador, fuelled in part by U.S. funding. The business is lucrative. An automatic weapon sells on the streets of Central America for perhaps $400. Once it reaches the Colombian border, the same rifle can fetch $2,000. Panama, which does not have an army, recently boosted its security presence on its southern border by 2,000 men because of increasing activity by Colombian guerrillas who use Panamanian territory sometimes just for a bit of R&R, sometimes allegedly to launch attacks against Colombian police. Panama depends on just 50 border patrol officers on an almost 200-mile (325-km) northern frontier with Costa Rica. ``Arms smuggling isn't something we're going to stop with more border police because there are a lot of hidden jungle routes,'' said Fernando Nunez Fabrega, head of finances for Panama's department of Public Security Affairs. AUTHORITIES LACK CRIME-FIGHTING EQUIPMENT Authorities know of at least 200 ``critical'' jungle paths that remain unsupervised, says Chiriqui customs chief Humberto Beitia. ``In any case, we don't have any four-wheel-drive vehicles or weapons, and we need a system of aerial vigilance because we don't have any helicopters or radar,'' he said. Last September, Carlos Castano, head of the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), one of the most-feared ultra-right death squads, accused Panamanian police of collaborating with Colombia's leftist guerrillas in the arms and drugs trade. He claimed in a letter sent to the government in Panama City that ``the loading and unloading of arms occurs every day in ports in the region close to the border with Colombia.'' While Panamanian officials reject charges of official collusion, they acknowledge that their country is a hub on a transnational smuggling route that connects drug dealers with left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries. The answer, they say, is to clamp down on smuggling across the Costa Rican border. And Panama is trying to do just that. Panamanian foreign policy official Alfredo Castillero Hoyos said cooperation with Costa Rica is excellent and getting even better. The two are discussing ways to improve bilateral communications, border controls and security, he said. Costa Rica and Panama are also discussing setting up a 125-foot (40 metre) ``no man's land'' on each side of the border. Panama favours a treeless terrain that would allow border police to see everyone coming across, while Costa Rica would like to have the area forested but with no man-made construction. In any case, Castillero said, the idea is to ``facilitate the fight against all types of illegal trafficking.'' 22:01 04-17-00 -------[Cybershooters contacts]-------- Editor: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website & subscription info: www.cybershooters.org
