Broiling the Yanquis

Special sessions of the United Nations Security Council outside of its Manhattan headquarters are not exactly routine. But a meeting to be held in March, which will consider measures for "strengthening international peace and security," is causing even more of a stir than usual. The reason is that at the request of Panama, the council meeting will be held in Panama City-- a choice of site that has angered the Nixon Administration.

Most of the session will be devoted to broiling the Yanquis. Panama, for instance, will presumably air its long standing demand for a new and more equitable Canal Zone treaty from the U.S. Last month, Panama's U.N. Ambassador Aquilino Boyd labeled the zone "a colonialist enclave," and charged that the U.S. had made it a "hotbed of international tension." Other Latin American countries are expected to press for international acceptance of a 200-mile offshore limit for a coastal nation's fishing rights-- a move hotly opposed by the U.S. Peru, Ecuador, Chile and Colombia will undoubtedly lobby for a formal statement deploring the exploitation of the continent's natural resources by U.S. firms.

If nothing else, the Panama City session will probably worsen the U.N.'s already low standing with the White House and Congress. "If any Congressman had doubts about the wisdom of cutting back contributions to the U.N.,"says one State Department official, "the vote approving the Panama session dashed them."

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