The Sovereign Panama Front (FPS) is a nationalist organization committed to ending foreign intervention, mainly that of the U.S., in Panama.  The group reportedly claimed responsibility for a September 1992 bombing of three government buildings in Panama City, and a group into which the FPS later assimilated was implicated in attacks during Panama Canal transfer ceremonies in December 1999.  Otherwise, the FPS and its leadership have advocated organized resistance to foreign military presence in Panama through picketing and demonstrations.<p><br /><br />The leader of the FPS was a physician and active member in Panamanian politics named Jorge Gamboa Arosemena.  Little is known about the group's founding, though similar nationalist groups formed in the wake of the December 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama in Operation Just Cause, which deposed President Manuel Noriega and led to hundreds of Panamanian military and civilian deaths and thousands of displaced citizens.<p><br /> <br />On the night of 18 September 1992, three bombs exploded in Panama City at the buildings of the Electoral Tribunal, the Foreign Ministry, and an office of the Tocumen International Airport.  The attacks injured two people, and two different groups  --  the Sovereign Panama Front and the Esteban Huertas Patriotic Front  --  reportedly claimed responsibility for the attacks, though the claims could not be verified.  A separate organization called M-20 (Movement of the 20th of December, referring to the date of the U.S. invasion) did not claim involvement but had been responsible for similar terrorist attacks.<p><br /><br />The FPS adamantly opposed the establishment of a U.S.-led Multilateral Counter Narcotics Center (MCC) in 1997 and 1998, which they viewed as a subversive method to extend U.S. military presence in Panama beyond the year 2000.  In January 1998, the FPS and over 50 student and professional organizations formed the National Movement for the Defense of Sovereignty, also known as MONADESO (Movimiento Nacional por la Defence de la Soberania).  Among the group's founding objectives were opposition to the MCC and the closure of foreign military bases in Panama (namely, the U.S. Army's Tropic Test Center, which shut down in 1999).<p><br /><br />MONADESO was accused of two small incidents in December 1999 at events marking the transfer of canal authority to Panama.  On 14 December, a group member reportedly threw a tear gas canister during a rehearsal of the transfer ceremony, and on 31 December, police alleged individuals of the 29th November Revolutionary Students Front (FER-29), a member organization of MONADESO, planted a Molotov cocktail under a vehicle during the actual ceremony.  FER-29 claimed that the device was instead a plastic bottle of diesel fuel used to burn U.S. flags and the effigy of a U.S. soldier.<p>