-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." ================================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> *Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day. ================================================================= DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! 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