Canal War II

House backs Panama treaties

Jimmy Carter's great foreign policy victory of 1978 was his successful fight to persuade a reluctant Senate to ratify the Panama Canal treaties that will give control of the vital waterway to the Panamanians in 20 years. That seemed to settle the issue once and for all, but last week conservatives in the House, just as dead set against the treaties as their colleagues in the Senate, tried to undermine the agreement--and very nearly succeeded.

The tactic was simply to prevent Congress from voting the funds that would allow the U.S. to live up to its obligations under the treaty. The Administration estimates that these requirements will cost the U.S. some $900 million over a 20-year period. Only about $85 million of this would go to Panama; the rest would be used to compensate American workers forced to leave the zone and, most important, to move U.S. defense facilities out of the area. Calling the treaties a giveaway, House conservatives argued that Panama should pay all the costs.

Three tunes in the past month the Administration had been so afraid of losing that it pulled its legislation off the floor. The Administration had hoped that Congress would approve an ongoing mechanism to carry out the provisions of the treaty over the 20-year span. That was too much to wish for. Last week Democrat John Murphy of New York worked out a complicated compromise that, in effect, would give Congress the right to approve the operation every year.

To drum up support for the treaty, the Administration had been mounting an elaborate lobbying effort for months. One recruit was Actor John Wayne. Just days before he died of cancer, Wayne sent a Mailgram message to every Congressman warning that defeat of the Administration's bill "could result in the closing of the canal, which would quite obviously cripple our shipping, our ports, our exporters, and consumers, not to mention our military strength."

Pausing between the summits in Vienna and Tokyo, Carter last week again joined the lobbying effort for the bill, and claimed to have converted 15 Congressmen. He needed every one. Despite the clear danger that U.S. relations with Panama--and the treaties themselves--could be plunged into chaos by a defeat, the Administration narrowly survived a series of votes. One proposal, requiring Panama to pay $75 million a year as part of the total transfer costs, was defeated by just three votes. Final passage approving Murphy's compromise was 224 to 202. The bill now goes to the Senate, where conservatives are planning to launch yet another attack on the beleaguered treaties.

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