Rubio warns Panama over China’s canal influence

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has threatened action against Panama if it does not immediately reduce Chinese influence on the canal.

Marco Rubio, left, talks to Panama Canal Authority Administrator Ricaurte Vasquez on Sunday during a tour at the Miraflores locks of the canal. Picture: AFP

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has threatened action against Panama if it does not immediately reduce Chinese influence on the canal.

Mr Rubio, paying his first visit overseas as the top US diplomat, told Panama that President ­Donald Trump had determined that the country had violated terms of the treaty that handed back the crucial waterway in 1999.

He pointed to the “influence and control” of China over the canal, the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through which 40 per cent of US container traffic passes.

Meeting President Jose Raul Mulino, Mr Rubio “made clear that this status quo is unacceptable and that absent immediate changes, it would require the US to take measures necessary to protect its rights under the treaty”.

Mr Mulino painted a less dire portrait of the meeting.

“I don’t feel that there is any real threat at this time against the treaty, its validity, or much less of the use of military force to seize the canal,” he said.

“Sovereignty over the canal is not in question.”

Mr Rubio did not spell out what measures the US might take.

He and Mr Trump say China has gained so much power around surrounding infrastructure that it could shut it down in a potential conflict, with catastrophic consequences for the US.

Small but intense protests broke out in Panama ahead of Mr Rubio’s visit, with police firing teargas.

On Friday, Mr Trump said “it’s appropriate that we take it back”.

The Panama Canal was built by the US at the cost of thousands of lives of labourers, mostly people of African descent from Barbados, Jamaica and elsewhere in the ­Caribbean.

The US maintained control when it opened in 1914 but began to negotiate following deadly riots in 1964 by Panaman­ians angered over foreign control.

Jimmy Carter sealed the agreement that gave the canal to Panama at the end of 1999, with the late president seeing a moral imperative for the US to respect a smaller but still sovereign country.

Mr Rubio, the first Hispanic secretary of state and a devout Catholic, will travel to El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic where he is expected to press for co-operation on ­deporting migrants from the US.

AFP