Word: panama
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Mexico. The disruption of cocaine-smuggling routes through Panama as a result of last December's U.S. invasion and stepped-up U.S. surveillance of the Caribbean basin and the Florida coast have sent the drug lords scrambling for their maps. Increasing quantities are being rerouted away from Miami to the U.S.-Mexico border. According to University of Miami professor Bruce Bagley, an expert on the drug trade, smuggling from Mexico now accounts for 70% of the coke that reaches...
Costa Rica's remote airstrips, meanwhile, are increasingly being used for plane-refueling stops, prompting plans to build a $20 million U.S.-funded radar station on the country's Pacific Coast. And in Panama the effort to shut down money-laundering operations has met with limited success. American- installed President Guillermo Endara is resisting U.S. pressure to lift some bank secrecy laws for fear of damaging the industry...
...this year, although the U.S. has given Panama $130 million to pay off arrears on its $5 billion foreign debt, Washington has laid out only $70 million in direct aid. "What we're giving them is not even equal to direct damages caused by the invasion," says former U.S. Ambassador Ambler Moss, who estimates the destruction's price tag to be $1 billion. Meanwhile, the surge in global oil prices has dealt the country an unexpected and potentially disastrous blow. Totally dependent on imported oil, Panama expects to see its petroleum costs double to $300 million next year. Says Comptroller...
...cocaine -- worth $153 million wholesale in the U.S. -- have been seized since January. "One can only surmise that if this much is being seized, a lot more is moving," says Hinton. At the same time, U.S. attempts to control money laundering have been stymied by Panama's banking laws, which remain unchanged since Noriega's days. Washington is eager to negotiate a treaty that would give American investigators access to secret accounts when they suspect criminal activity. But Endara's associates claim this would destroy the banking industry...
...long as the U.S. was involved in relatively small operations with few casualties, like the invasions of Grenada and Panama, it did not seem to matter much that the armed forces were an imperfect mirror of society. The prospect of sizable bloodshed in the gulf, however, has led some to ask whether the current imbalance makes it too easy for the President and Congress to send forces into battle. "If the U.S. military were truly representative of the country, you would have people going through the roof right now," said former Navy Secretary James Webb two weeks...