Implementation successfully done.

The transfers went like clockwork, to the credit of the United States and the military in particular, noted William H. Hughes, former Ambassador to Panama (1995-98), in an April 1999 bulletin of the Atlantic Council of the United States.

"Today, the implementation of the treaty is a good news story that largely has been untold in the United States and is not fully appreciated in Panama, " noted a July 1999 Atlantic Council of the United States policy paper, Panama Canal Transition: The Final Implementation (see sources used at end of this section).

Current Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso said "We have complied with the treaties and so has the United States. We had much faith that they were going to comply and beginning with the transition in 1977 to 2000 they have done so." (interview with Washington correspondent Henry Raymont, El Panama America, January 23, 2000).

The real challenge was in 1999, completing the remaining property transfers amounting to about 68 percent of the land (65,600 acres) and about 57 percent of the total buildings (2,990) controlled by the U.S. Forces in 1979, according to U.S. officials. Completing the final phase of the drawdown in 1999 was an enormous task. Illustrative of the many actions required, it meant redeploying about 76,000 pieces of military equipment, 4,600 military personnel (along with families and some 3,000 pets), their personal automobiles, and household goods, as well as closing out vacated offices, unit buildings, family housing, and other facilities in preparation for transfer to Panama.

Early Panamanian assessments of Panamanian use of transferred military properties are included in the separate section entitled Panama's Interoceanic Region Authority (ARI).

Range cleanup -- a lingering sensitive issue.

The one major discordant issue that might offset much of the positive accomplishments during the last four or five years of the transition has been the U.S. position of not cleaning the ranges' impact areas of unexploded ordnance, which are relatively small areas that everyone expected [before 1990] would be used by a Panamanian military that no longer exists. This most sensitive issue -- noted the Atlantic Council of the United States policy paper, Panama Canal Transition: The Final Implementation -- could poison relations for years to come.