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Panama Urges U.S. to Analyze Abandoned Chemical Arms
Panamanian Foreign Minister Jose Miguel Aleman on Friday urged the United States to send a team of specialists as soon as possible to analyze chemical weapons its army abandoned on San Jose Island.
The minister told reporters that that during his latest trip to Washington on the occasion of the "Week of Panama" in October, he asked the U.S. authorities "to organize a technical visit to the island of San Jose (part of the Pearls Archipelago in the Pacific Ocean) to check the abandoned chemical bombs we found."
Panama this week sent a notification to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the U.S. would be informed of this request, Aleman added. "Once they're notified, we'll have to wait over 30 days for them to send a technical mission to Panama."
Aleman said: "Any country that had abandoned chemical weapons in the territory of another country is responsible for their removal; that's why OPCW was created, and that's why all the countries have ratified the treaty."
The minister expressed his conviction that the ratification of the OPCW treaty by the United States "is a sign of goodwill, showing they will cope with this problem."
In September, the Panamanian government declared the San Jose Island subject to sanitary control and ordered its evacuation after finding three 1.4 ton bombs and another weighing 228 kilograms containing a chemical substance dating back to the Second World War.
The United States ended its 85-year military presence in Panama on December 31, 1999, in accordance with the 1977 Torrijos-Carter accords on Panama Canal, which allowed the Central American country to exercise full sovereignty after the transfer of the interoceanic channel.
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