The president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, has accused the US of peddling a “quite simply intolerable falsehood” about the Panama canal, as Donald Trump’s pledge to “take back” the waterway continued to poison relations between the two countries and cause alarm around Latin America.
Panama accuses US of peddling ‘intolerable falsehood’ about canal President José Raúl Mulino denies making a deal that US ships can transit the canal free of charge.
According to the state department, Rubio told Mulino Trump believed “the current position of influence and control of the Chinese Communist Party over the Panama Canal area is a threat to the canal” and was “unacceptable”.
The US state department claimed late on Wednesday the Central American country had agreed to no longer charge US government vessels to pass through its canal – a move that would supposedly save Washington millions of dollars a year.
One of the main motivations behind Trump’s rhetoric appears to be pressuring Panama – and other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean – to slow down China’s economic push into a region the US has long regarded as its “backyard”.
