The State Department official in charge of the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, Assistant Secretary Brian A. Nichols, baldly suggested yesterday that the U.S. would support prohibiting Russian ships from using the Panama Canal—a violation of one of the two treaties signed in 1977 by U.S. President Jimmy Carter and then-Panamanian President Omar Torrijos. The treaty, “Concerning the Permanent Neutrality and Operation of the Panama Canal,” establishes in Article II that the Canal as “an international transit waterway shall be permanently neutral,” and “both in time of peace and in time of war it shall remain secure and open to peaceful transit by the vessels of all nations on terms of entire equality so that there will be no discrimination against any nation, or its citizens or subjects…” (https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/wha/rlnks/11936.htm#:~:text=President%20Jimmy%20Carter%20and%20Panamanian,2000%20and%20guarantees%20its%20neutrality)
The issue arose during the briefing that Nichols gave with Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Marta Youth for Population, Refugees and Migration, on Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s Aug. 19-20 trip to Panama for a Ministerial on Migration and Protection to be attended by representatives from 20 Ibero-American and Caribbean countries. A reporter asked Nichols what might be expected from Blinken’s Panama meetings, and specifically whether the U.S. supported the idea of blocking Russian ships from using the Canal as some have requested. While claiming, “I can’t speak to the specifics of ship traffic,” Nichols strongly implied that the U.S. could indeed support such a measure, and that “I believe that we will seek ever greater application of those measures by our partners and allies around the hemisphere and around the world.”
