Word: canallers
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...Panama were still at arm's length over the Canal Zone, though both sides seemed to be wearying of the six-week dispute. A new formula called for the two countries to resume diplomatic relations and then appoint negotiators with "full plenipotentiary powers" to discuss the 1903 treaty under which the U.S. operates the Panama Canal. The phraseology was intended to satisfy Panamanian demands for changes in the treaty, while not committing the U.S. in advance. By week's end Secretary of State Dean Rusk could only say: "There has not been an agreement...
...Panama will probably work out a compromise eventually. But even then, the Panama Canal problems will not be ended. The canal has long ago ceased to be a vital military waterway for the U.S., and as an avenue of world trade it is rapidly growing obsolete. What is needed is a brand-new canal...
Seeking a Site. In the last decade, commercial traffic through the canal has nearly doubled, from 36 million tons a year to 63.8 million tons in fiscal 1963. The U.S. has widened and deepened the old channels. But the three intricate sets of double locks are still unable to accommodate more than 50 to 60 vessels a day-and ships sometimes lie to for 15 hours or more awaiting their turn. Within ten years the present canal would be one big traffic...
Over the years the U.S. has studied every likely spot from southern Mexico to the jungles of northwest Colombia with the idea of building a new canal-at sea level and hence without the need for locks. *In 1945 Congress ordered the first broad investigation of new routes; at least 30 were considered. When Panama's President Roberto F. Chiari visited Washington in 1962, President Kennedy told him that any renegotiated treaty would have to take into account U.S. plans for a new canal...
Then came the Jan. 9 Canal Zone riots, reviving with new urgency the need for alternative canal proposals. Of all the potential sites, five sea-level routes drew closest attention as the least expensive and easiest to dig. Each route has been studied for possible excavation by either conventional or nuclear methods. By using nuclear explosives (TIME, Jan. 31), the U.S. could build any one of them for only a fraction of the cost of a conventional canal...