Opening the Great Canal Debate

Panama treaty proponents confront a parliamentary thicket

Shortly after 12:30 p.m. one day last week, James B. Allen of Alabama rose slowly to his feet from his aisle seat in the U.S. Senate and announced that he wanted to pose 17 parliamentary questions on the historic issue before the house. One was whether the Senators would have to deal with both English and Spanish versions of the matter, and one was whether amendments to the treaties were themselves subject to amendment.

And so, with all the proceedings carried live on radio for the first time, the Senate finally came to grips with the strongly opposed treaties that would surrender U.S. control of the Panama-Canal in the year 2000. Observers predicted at least a month of debate and a close vote. The treaties require a two-thirds majority, or 67 votes, and Administration head counters figured scarcely 60 as certain.

When the White House began counting votes as early as last summer, only 27 Senators would declare their support of the treaties, despite the fact that four Administrations, two Republican and two Democratic, had worked toward the agreements for 13 years. Under the leadership of Ronald Reagan, the conservatives launched an intensive direct-mail campaign to raise money against the treaties, and public opinion polls showed 2-to-1 opposition to ceding the canal.

In all, Carter Administration officials made more than 700 speeches in support of the treaties. Carter himself met with every Senator. He delivered his second fireside chat. He met with 1,500 "opinion leaders," whose names were forwarded to the White House by Senators who needed home-state support before they could dare to announce their own support for the treaties.

"We had to re-create the foreign policy Establishment," says White House Aide Landon Butler. Out of the past came figures like Averell Harriman and John J. McCloy to form the Committee of Americans for the Canal Treaties. Even as what the White House calls "gullible ideologues" were spending millions of dollars to defeat the treaties, the Establishment group was raising hundreds of thousands of dollars on its own, both from direct-mail solicitations and from large corporations with interests in Latin America, like the Chase Manhattan Bank, United Brands and Occidental Petroleum. Meanwhile, former President Ford began speaking out on behalf of the treaties, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger worked on key Senators. Together, they made it easier for moderate Republicans to resist the Reagan-led opposition. "If Kissinger had trucked this one," says one White House aide, "we would have been in serious trouble."

The Republican National Committee did vote last fall to oppose the treaties; its opposition created a difficult problem for Senate G.O.P. members and particularly for the minority leader, Howard Baker of Tennessee, who wants a shot at his party's presidential nomination in 1980. Last month after a visit to Panama, requested by the country's ruler, General Omar Torrijos, Baker announced his pivotal sup port for a slightly modified treaty. "I told Senator Baker," said Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd, "if either you or I go against the treaties, they probably will be defeated. If both you and I go for them, they may be confirmed."

After a long year of keeping his political distance from Carter, Byrd plunged into the treaty battle. At his urging, Carter and Torrijos issued a joint statement clarifying two points in the treaties: that the U.S. would permanently retain the right to defend the waterway's neutrality, and that in an emergency U.S. Navy vessels would "go to the head of the line" through the canal.

Byrd and Baker combined to draft amendments to the treaties containing exactly the language of the "clarification" --then deftly persuaded the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to omit it so that a host of Senators could co-sponsor the amendments and thus claim credit for protecting U.S. interests in the Panama Canal Zone. By week's end, 78 Senators had signed on as cosponsors.

Even though the Administration is now optimistic about ratification (and polls show a majority of the public in favor), the two amendments will not quell significant opposition. Republican Moderate Robert Griffin of Michigan, who has taken on the job of managing the opposition, denounced the treaties last week as "pregnant with the seeds of acrimony and strife ... fatally flawed and riddled with ambiguity." Senator John Stennis of Mississippi warned that the transfer would cost more than $1 billion. Reagan joined in with a nationwide TV address in which he claimed that the treaties might result in the loss "of our own freedom."

After three days of debate, the Senators adjourned for a week-long recess; but before leaving Washington, they agreed to an unusual closed-door session next week to discuss charges that General Torrijos is involved in secret drug traffic. When the issue was raised by a treaty opponent, Robert Dole of Kansas, Fellow Republican Jacob Javits of New York argued that the point was meaningless. "We don't have to prove that Torrijos is an angel. I don't think he is ... What is important is whether the treaties are in the long-term interest of the United States, and I think they are."

Javits' argument is increasingly accepted. The canal, too narrow for the largest aircraft carriers and supertankers, is no longer the maritime lifeline it once was. On the contrary, it is widely regarded in Latin America as an anachronistic relic of the colonialist era--and an easy target for nationalist violence.

But whatever jeopardy the treaties face in the Senate lies not in the arguments but in the dozens of amendments that will be offered by opponents. The procedural thickets may be as hard for the Senate leadership to hack through as was the Panamanian jungle 74 years ago. sb

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