Canal treaty may yet cause headaches

Press, 12 May 1981, Page 16

Canal treaty may yet cause headaches

By

ALMA GUILLERMOPRIETO

in “The Guardian,” London

It is all still there: the delicate white-roofed mansions along the palm-lined streets, the unobtrusive fences designed to protect the foreigners from local intrusion, the reassuring grandeur of the administration building, and the lovely wide view from its balconies, the proud flag fluttering atop the hill, and the silver ribbons' of water that are the entrance to the Panama Canal.

The only immediately apparent difference in the Zone, a 16-kilometre wide strip of land running the 80 kilometres of the canal’s length, is the flag — not the stars and stripes, but Panama’s colours of red, white and blue. It was first hoisted inside the American compound 16 years ago by rioting highschool youths. Their nationalist sensibilities smarted at the thought of United States ownership and military occupation of 600 square miles of their territory. The Panamanian flag was legally raised only 15 years later, when the Panamanian leader, General Omar Torrijos, and Mr Carter finally signed a new treaty returning most of the Canal Zone land to Panama immediately and ceding ownership of the canal itself by the year 2000 to the country on whose soil it was built. Still the focus for controversy, the canal itself continues

to operate as flawlessly as it did in 1914, when Theodore Roosevelt’s monument to empire was inaugurated. At least 20,000 blacks, Filipinos, Chinese, Greek, and Spanish labourers lost their lives in the construction work, the victims of malnutrition, exhaustion, malaria, and yellow fever. Having engineered Panamas secession from Colombia, the United States then engineerej a canal through the thinnest part of the continent with such daring and precision that most of the original construction is still in use today. Every year more than 13,000 cargo ships ease themselves in: to the canal’s locks. It is an impressively smooth operation, and a steady stream of American tourists fill the reviewing stand to watch it. The treaty caused no-one deep satisfaction. General Torrijos, who once said “I don’t want to get into the history books, I just want to get into the Canal,” was so unhappy with the result of his seven years at the negotiating table that he did not even attend the flag-raising ceremony. Many Panamanians considered the treaty a sell-out. And in the United States, Mr Ronald Reagan, and other spokesmen for the Right, denounced General Torrijos and Mr Carter and the treaty in ringing tones. Now Mr Reagan is in power,

and the Panamanian Left asserts that his Administration is .trying to sabotage the treaty. Certainly there has been a rash of incidents that have evoked Panamanian protests. The Ministry of Foreign Relations, the immigration department and the Panamanian members of the Canal’s Joint Administrative Commission have ail issued statements against vari(us violations of the treaty’s spirit.

Early this year, United States military personnel tried to sneak in several dozen Salvadorean officers for training in a United States military base that remains in the Canal Zone without identifying them to Panamanian immigration officials. More recently, the four Panamanians on the Administrative Commission protested against an official deficit budget for the Canal. The Canal operates without losses, they say, but its budget is being used for things like public lighting and maintenance for the remaining United States residents of the Zone.

According to the United States officials, there is no systematic effort as such to undermine the treaty. The real test of the new Administration’s attitude towards Panama will come later this year, when the implementing legislation comes up for review. At that

ime the multiple amendments, .•lauses and rules added by the Republican Party to the original treaty could be taken further — to undermine Panamanian sovereignty. Under the terms of the treaty, the United States will continue to operate the canal until the year 2000. A total of

276 square miles of land will remain under United States control until then. The commercial need for a sea passage through the Americas is gradually diminishing, and many economists think the Canal will be obsolete 19 years from now. The military usefulness to the United States of the

Canal Zone, however, is still being made explicit. It is headquarters for the United States Southern Command, a jump-off point for defence activities in the Caribbean and South America, and a platform for the United States growing involvement in Central American counter-insurgency.