Word: canallers
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...could such a good cause get into so much trouble? The Panama Canal treaty, which gradually cedes U.S. control over the waterway to Panama by the year 2000, is nothing if not reasonable and conciliatory. It is a common-sensical solution to a nagging, decades-old problem-one that has damaged U.S. relations not with an enemy but with a relatively good neighbor. Yet opposition has grown so intense that while the treaty is expected to be approved by a plebiscite in Panama this week, it is still in considerable trouble in the U.S. Senate...
...quoted one of the Panamanian negotiators as denying flatly that the treaties would give the U.S. the right to intervene militarily or even send its warships through on a priority basis after 1999. When the cable hit the headlines, anti-treaty Senators howled in outrage, and backers of the canal pacts groaned. Democratic Senator Frank Church warned that the apparent differences between the U.S. and Panamanian views of the pacts had to be resolved quickly. "Otherwise," he said, "this will be a tangle, then a morass and finally a legislative catastrophe...
...dinner at the White House, that the treaties were in deep trouble-and in fact would not be approved by the Senate without modifications clarifying two critical points: 1) the right of U.S. intervention after 1999 and 2) the right of U.S. warships to have priority in transiting the canal in emergencies. Carter then decided to take the initiative. Early in the week he invited the leaders of the Senate and the Foreign Relations Committee to the White House. Over coffee and doughnuts, he showed them a draft of a proposed "statement of understanding" on defense rights and revealed that...
When the Carter-Torrijos statement was released after the two held their meeting three days later, it contained one image-saving concession much desired by the Panamanian: it affirmed that none of the canal defense provisions should be "interpreted as a right of intervention of the United States in the internal affairs of Panama." On the other hand, the statement also appeared to deal squarely with the Senate's principal concerns. It said flatly that both the U.S. and Panama would "defend the canal against any threat" to its neutrality or to "the peaceful transit of vessels through...
...Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; he worried last week that U.S. interests might be placed "in severe jeopardy" some day by the development of a "Torrijos-Castro-Moscow axis." Another retired admiral, former Chief of Naval Operations Elmo Zumwalt, called the canal a "colonialist anachronism" and praised the treaties as "an important step" in assuring U.S. access to the waterway...