Keeping the Canal Pacts Afloat

Carter cools a crisis of understanding with an "understanding"

"We understand each other." So said Panama's General Omar Torrijos Herrera last week, soon after he emerged from a 105-minute session with Jimmy Carter in the White House. It was no idle remark. Just how the two leaders under stood the meaning of certain key elements of the Panama Canal treaties had become a crucial question in Carter's struggle to sell the pacts to the Senate and a still skeptical U.S. public. By week's end, with the aid of a three-paragraph "statement of understanding," Carter seemed to have dealt deftly with the dispute -- and perhaps even improved the embattled treaties' prospects for eventual Senate passage.

The crisis of understanding swirled largely around the issue of U.S. rights, including defense rights, when Panama takes full control of the canal after 1999.

Because the word intervention is abhor rent to Panamanians, who will be asked to approve the canal pacts in a referendum on Oct. 23, it does not appear at all in the text. Instead, the U.S. right to defend the canal against attack is cloaked in the seemingly ambiguous phrase, "The United States of America and the Republic of Panama agree to maintain the regime of neutrality established in this treaty."

Two weeks ago Kansas Republican Robert Dole, one of the point men in the Senate conservatives' anti-treaty assault, stirred up worries about the pacts' imprecise language on this and other issues.

Dole passed out copies of a confidential State Department cable that 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."

As the doubts and denunciations mounted, Senate Democratic Leader Robert Byrd signaled Carter, during a private 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 he had invited Torrijos to stop off at the White House on his way back to Panama after a trip to Europe and the Middle East.

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 the canal." In addition, the statement affirmed that U.S. and Panamanian warships not only would use the canal "with expedited treatment" at all times but would also be allowed to "go to the head of the line" of vessels awaiting passage in cases of "need or emergency."

The statement considerably brightened the treaties' prospects, said Majority Leader Byrd, whom Carter called to inform of the new understanding: "It goes beyond my expectations. I was very, very gratified. In my mind, it clears up the disputed points."

At week's end, however, it was still unclear whether the Senators would accept the "clarification" as sufficient. They could still demand that its language be worked into a protocol or into the treaty itself. That would involve an arduous renegotiation effort that would certainly consume much time and might well spur the Panamanians to demand even larger concessions from Washington. Argues U.S. Negotiator Sol Linowitz: "Everything we wanted is in that treaty now, in that language."

Yet, leading Senators are still miffed that no one in the White House bothered to show them the treaties before the signing ceremony last month. A widely quoted wisecrack by Carter's aide Hamilton Jordan last week scarcely improved those bruised White House-Hill relations. Referring to the cascade of anti-treaty letters that Senators have been receiving, Jordan snickered that "some of those bastards don't have the spine not to vote their mail. If you change their mail, you change their mind." Said New Jersey Republican Clifford Case, a supporter of the pacts: "That was not helpful."

In fact, the testimony that the Senators have heard on the treaties so far has been overwhelmingly favorable. One of the few major witnesses to speak out against them has been 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.

Former Secretaries of State Dean Rusk and Henry Kissinger both warned the committee of the danger of alienating all of Latin America by rejecting the treaties. The Administration, said Kissinger, should try harder to persuade the public "that we are not retreating, that we are protecting our long-term interests."

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