Me mandaron esto sobre el Canal de Panama. A ver que les parece.
________________________________________________________________
Jaime Forero
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
281-244-8779
NASA VITT
Siempre adelante !!
> ----------
> From: Mahan[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, March 01, 1999 8:16 PM
> To: Mahan, Fred & Cheryl
> Subject: Who Needs The Panama Canal?
>
> Who Needs the Panama Canal?
> WorldTribune.com
> Robert Morton
> March 1, 1999
>
> In 1976, Ronald Reagan mobilized his conservative base and almost defeated
> Gerald Ford for the Republican presidential nomination by campaigning to
> retain U.S. sovereignty over the Panama Canal. Ford won the nomination,
> lost
> the White House and on Sept. 7, 1977, Jimmy Carter signed a treaty with
> Gen.
> Omar Torrijos surrendering the canal to Panama on Dec. 31 of this year.
>
> The United States gained the goodwill of a leftist dictator and lost a
> prime
> geopolitical asset - one built and maintained with tens of billions of
> taxpayers' money in a nation with no army or navy. Polls show most
> Panamanians support continued American military presence. The
> installations
> fortify the economy, the native bureaucrats' competence at managing the
> canal is suspect, and the local police are no match for the
> narco-terrorists
> operating with impunity in neighboring Colombia where schoolchildren are
> taught that Panama is really Colombia. But does anyone really care about
> the
> Panama Canal?
>
> No one, it would seem, except Communist China's Military Industrial
> Complex,
> otherwise know as the People's Liberation Army (PLA). If the United States
> does not consider the canal a strategic asset, the surviving communist
> superpower apparently does. In a deal reported by this newspaper on March
> 19, 1997, the Clintonesque government of Panama in effect sold the Chinese
> rights to two prime, American-built port facilities which flank the canal
> zone both to the east and the west. The 50-year contract awarded Balboa,
> on
> the Pacific side, and Cristobal, on the Atlantic side, to a giant Hong
> Kong
> shipping firm, Hutchison Whampoa, Ltd. By any analysis this company,
> headed
> by Li Kashing is an interesting operation:
>
> * Hutchison has worked closely with the China Ocean Shipping Co. (COSCO)
> on
> shipping deals in Asia even before Hong Kong reverted to Beijing's control
> in 1997. COSCO, you may remember, is the PLA-controlled company that
> almost
> succeeded in gaining control of the abandoned naval station at Long Beach
> California.
>
> * Li Kashing has served on the board of directors of China International
> Trust and Investment Corp., a PLA-affiliated giant run by Wang Jun whose
> name may ring a bell.
>
> Yes, the very same Wang Jun enjoyed coffee at the White House in exchange
> for a modest donation to the Clinton-Gore 1996 slush fund.
>
> As Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, USN (Ret.) testified before the Senate Foreign
> Relations Committee on June 16, 1998, "My specific concern is that this
> company is controlled by the Communist Chinese. And they have virtually
> accomplished, without a single shot being fired, a stronghold on the
> Panama
> Canal, something which took our country so many years to accomplish." Not
> to
> worry, the spin goes. This is 1999. The Soviet Union is dead, Russia is
> bankrupt, the really big ships can't fit in the canal anyway, and we could
> always seize control in wartime. As the clock ticks down to Dec. 31, 1999,
> there is no anxiety like that engendered by the Y2K computer crisis. Just
> how important is the Panama Canal? Speaking on his car phone after a busy
> post-impeachment day at the office, U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., was
> emphatic.
>
> "I think the geopolitical significance of the Panama Canal in 1999 is the
> same as it has been for the past 85 years - critical." The new Chinese
> presence there only adds to its significance, he said. Mr. Barr who was a
> schoolboy in Panama and served in the CIA, traveled to Panama last January
> with Lt. Gen. Gordon Sumner, (U.S. Army, Ret.) a former chairman of the
> Inter-American Defense Board. At the June 16 hearing, Mr. Barr testified
> on
> the importance of a continuing U.S. presence to offset the narco-terrorist
> threat in a region for which Panama serves as a transportation and
> geographic nexus. He laments the lack of interest in the issue by the U.S.
> congress and especially by the White House. "We don't have any strategic
> thinking," says Gen. Sumner. "There is no long-term vision. Whatever you
> think of Henry Kissinger, he had a strategic vision."
>
> The Chinese certainly have "strategic vision," according to former Soviet
> GRU officer, Col. Stanislav Lunev. "The Chinese intention to develop
> ocean-going capabilities for its navy is well-known," he wrote in an
> article
> for Insight magazine in November 1977. "This is the reason that Chinese
> entrepreneurs are actively in the market for abandoned port facilities in
> strategic locations." "They take a long view of history," says Mr. Barr
> who
> noted that the Chinese have also been quietly increasing their presence in
> Cuba.
>
> Shortly after President Clinton announced the departure of the U.S.
> military
> from Panama, the Bank of China extended a 15-year, $120 million loan to
> Panama at a 3 percent interest rate. Nice. This was during the 1996 U.S.
> presidential campaign, incidentally, when boatloads of Chinese money were
> also making their way into the coffers of the Democratic Party. And the
> DNC
> chairman that year was Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd who along with Jimmy
> Carter's National Security Advisor, Robert Pastor, supports the turnover
> as
> passionately now as they did in 1977.
>
> So when several American companies including Bechtel International
> tendered
> bids in the neighborhood of $2 million for leases on the strategic ports
> at
> Balboa and Cristobal, Panamanian President Ernesto "Toro" Balladares
> secretly changed the rules of the bidding process and accepted Hutchison
> Whampoa offer for $22.2 million a year.
>
> Well, if the White House was for sale, why not the Panama Canal? The fine
> print in the China-Panama deal should outrage any competent commander in
> chief. Panama's Law No. 5 was a secret provision, passed by the
> legislative
> assembly on Jan. 16, 1997 that may have violated both the 1977 Panama
> Canal
> treaties and the Panamanian constitution. Among other things Law No. 5
> provided Hutchison Whampoa:
>
> * "First option" to take over the U.S. Rodman naval station;
>
> *"Rights" to operate piloting and tug boat services for the canal and
> private roads near the two ports;
>
> * Authority in the words of Adm. Moorer's testimony "to deny ships access
> to
> the ports and entrances of the canal if they are deemed to be interfering
> with Hutchison's business - in direct violation of the 1977 Panama Canal
> Treaty which guarantees expeditious passage for the United States Navy."
>
> "What the hell are we doing?" asks former Reagan administration official
> Martin Anderson, now at the Hoover Institution. Good question. Another
> good
> question is "what are the Chinese doing?" But that is none of our
> business,
> Janet Reno has ruled.
>
>
> Robert Morton is managing editor of the National Weekly Edition of The
> Washington Times in which this column was first published in the March 1-8
> edition. He is also a media fellow at the Hoover Institution. Robert
> Morton
> can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
