After Agreement, What?

The U.S. and Panama were still at arm's length over the Canal Zone, though both sides seemed to be wearying of the six-week dispute. A new formula called for the two countries to resume diplomatic relations and then appoint negotiators with "full plenipotentiary powers" to discuss the 1903 treaty under which the U.S. operates the Panama Canal. The phraseology was intended to satisfy Panamanian demands for changes in the treaty, while not committing the U.S. in advance. By week's end Secretary of State Dean Rusk could only say: "There has not been an agreement yet."

The U.S. and Panama will probably work out a compromise eventually. But even then, the Panama Canal problems will not be ended. The canal has long ago ceased to be a vital military waterway for the U.S., and as an avenue of world trade it is rapidly growing obsolete. What is needed is a brand-new canal.

Seeking a Site. In the last decade, commercial traffic through the canal has nearly doubled, from 36 million tons a year to 63.8 million tons in fiscal 1963. The U.S. has widened and deepened the old channels. But the three intricate sets of double locks are still unable to accommodate more than 50 to 60 vessels a day--and ships sometimes lie to for 15 hours or more awaiting their turn. Within ten years the present canal would be one big traffic jam.

Over the years the U.S. has studied every likely spot from southern Mexico to the jungles of northwest Colombia with the idea of building a new canal--at sea level and hence without the need for locks. *In 1945 Congress ordered the first broad investigation of new routes; at least 30 were considered. When Panama's President Roberto F. Chiari visited Washington in 1962, President Kennedy told him that any renegotiated treaty would have to take into account U.S. plans for a new canal.

Then came the Jan. 9 Canal Zone riots, reviving with new urgency the need for alternative canal proposals. Of all the potential sites, five sea-level routes drew closest attention as the least expensive and easiest to dig. Each route has been studied for possible excavation by either conventional or nuclear methods. By using nuclear explosives (TIME, Jan. 31), the U.S. could build any one of them for only a fraction of the cost of a conventional canal.

Counting the Cost. One possible route crosses the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico. Last January Democratic Majority Leader Mike Mansfield proposed that the U.S. and Mexico join with other maritime nations in building the canal. But Mexico's initial reaction was cool. At that, a Tehuantepec canal would be the longest and most expensive to dig, costing $2.3 billion and requiring 815 nuclear explosives. The Nicaragua-Costa Rica route would cost less ($1.9 billion), but raises all sorts of political problems by crossing two countries. Another surveyed route, at the Atrato and Truando rivers of north west Colombia, could be excavated with 610 nuclear charges at a cost of $1.2 billion--and perhaps would raise fewer diplomatic problems.

Actually, the two best routes cut across Panama itself. At the Gulf of San Bias, the isthmus is only 40 miles wide, making it the shortest potential site; 185 nuclear charges would do the trick, and it would cost only $620 million. However, this route runs too close to urban areas for the safe use of nuclear explosives. That would be no problem at the 60-mile Sasardi-Morti route, deep in the jungle of lower Panama. According to AEC estimates, 325 nuclear charges would be enough. The cost would be $500 million, and a labor force of 4,500 men could have it ready for business within four years of the first trench-digging explosive.

The trick, of course, will be to write a treaty that will satisfy the U.S. and Panama.

*For the Panama Canal, engineers decided on locks to stair-step water up 85 feet to a lake, then across the isthmus. It was also less expensive to install locks than to excavate a deeper, sea-level canal.

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