Panama: Canal Hitch

When President Johnson announced last December that the U.S. would dig a new sea-level canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific, the obvious location seemed to be Panama, probably 125 miles southeast of the old canal.

Last week a U.S. delegation led by Assistant Secretary of State Thomas C. Mann returned from preliminary talks with the Panamanians, and the report was discouraging. As one U.S. spokesman put it: "Our Government will never build the new canal where it would mean 50 more years of conflict."

Genuine Service. The U.S. is prepared to spend up to $2 billion on the project. It does...

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