-Caveat Lector-
December 12, 1999
Panama Trouble: Who Hands
Canal Over?
By ADAM CLYMER
WASHINGTON -- At the beginning of the century,
President Theodore Roosevelt not only drove
home the importance of the Panama Canal to America's
becoming a great power, he also felt so strongly about
it that he drove a steam shovel that helped dig the
engineering marvel of his age.
Now, as the century ends, another president, Bill
Clinton, is having trouble finding a United States
official to give it away, a problem that more than
anything reflects how the canal has receded in
importance -- militarily, economically and, above all,
politically.
Even as the administration describes the moment of the
handover as a signal one in relations with Latin
America, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright said
she would not go, apparently because she preferred to
be in Washington for Middle East peace talks.
The American delegation will instead be led by Jimmy
Carter, who was president in 1978 when the Senate
decided, with only one vote to spare, to approve the
treaties giving away the canal, which cost the United
States $352 million and 5,609 lives to build.
The Panamanians had hoped that the handover
ceremony would be more prestigious. Panama's
president, Mireya Moscoso, came to Washington in
October to ask Clinton to go himself this Tuesday to the
Miraflores Locks for the ceremony that will
symbolically transfer power over the canal. The
president was noncommittal.
The State Department recommended that the president
go. The National Security Council sent him a
memorandum that described the ceremonies but did not
say whether he should attend. Officials there would not
say what was the recommendation of the president's
national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger.
"I know he wanted to go," Thomas F. McLarty 3rd,
formerly the president's top Latin American adviser,
said on Friday. "He did ask me about it, just in a casual
conversation a few weeks ago. He genuinely wanted to
go. I think he felt it was a historic occasion."
Clinton has never told the Panamanians or the
American public why he has decided not to attend.
White House aides have offered a variety of
explanations, from the need to work on the budget, to
the difficulty of laying on yet another foreign trip, to his
desire to let Carter take the leading role -- an
explanation suggesting a Clinton affection for Carter
previously unknown.
Aside from Dr. Albright, with whom Berger argued
over her decision to stay away, another obvious fill-in
for Clinton is Vice President Al Gore. But, in a
presidential campaign in which Gore clearly wants to
take no chances at all, he never volunteered, knowing
that among the costs of the approval of the canal
treaties in 1978 and 1980 were the seats of about a
dozen Democratic senators. Nor did the White House,
his staff insisted, ever ask him to go.
By the weekend, the White House was still scrambling
to fill the delegation. While Rodney Slater, secretary of
transportation, and William Daley, secretary of
commerce, were included in the delegation, the State
Department said its highest-ranking official would be
Peter Romero, the acting assistant secretary of state for
Western Hemisphere affairs.
But if the administration was having trouble stirring up
much enthusiasm for the handover, critics were also
failing to stir up much outrage over what at this stage is
a done deal.
That was not always the case. In 1976, while President
Gerald R. Ford was negotiating a pact, he was
challenged in the Republican primaries by Ronald
Reagan, who made the canal issue a rallying cry,
saying: "We built it. We paid for it. It's ours and we're
going to keep it."
Another California Republican, Senator S. I.
Hayakawa, displayed a sense of the history of
American involvement in Panama's secession from
Colombia when he said, "we stole it fair and square."
The fight in the Senate in 1978 was bitter, and today's
arguments are pallid in comparison. Senator Trent Lott,
the Republican leader from Mississippi, and
Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a California
Republican, have been complaining that
Hutchison-Whampoa, a company based in Hong Kong,
has contracts for container ports at both ends of the
canal -- an implication that the canal could become a
foothold for Chinese meddling, or worse, in the
Western Hemisphere.
Lott has called its presence "a critical national security
issue." Rohrabacher said the problem was even worse:
"Mainland Chinese criminal Triad gangs -- some of
whom have ties to Chinese intelligence agencies -- are
active throughout Panama, in partnership with the
Russian mafia, the Cuban intelligence service and
South American cartels in conducting drug and
weapons smuggling."
Robert Pastor, a professor of political science at
Emory University who worked on the treaties under
President Carter, scoffed at such complaints, saying
Hutchison-Whampoa runs large port operations around
the world
But Pastor also criticized Clinton, saying the
president's absence from the handover ceremony was a
mistake.
This was the moment, he said, to define American
leadership for the 21st century, for "the transformation
of the 20th century is symbolized by the evolution of
our role in Panama, from insisting on a quasi-colonial
presence to defend the canal at the beginning of the
century to recognizing that the best way to defend the
canal in the new century is by a partnership with
Panama."
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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