Marco Rubio tells the Panama leader that ‘immediate changes’ are needed

The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, seemed to climb the confrontation of the Trump administration with Panama on Sunday, telling his leader that President Trump had determined that the Chinese “influence and control” on the Panama channel threaten the river route and demand “immediate changes,” according to the State Department.

The president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, provided a different description of the discussion, saying after the meeting that did not believe that Mr. Rubio had transmitted a threat that Trump could move to claim the shipping route built by the United States. He said he saw little risk of such intervention.

But President Trump, who spoke with journalists in the joint base of Andrews in Maryland on the channel on Sunday, said “we will recover it, or something very powerful will happen.”

The State Department Meeting Summary In Panama City, the first of Rubio with a foreign leader since he became secretary of state, gave a tone that was sometimes aggressive. He said Rubio had told his host that Trump had made a “preliminary determination” that the Chinese government exercised control over the channel.

“The Rubio secretary made it clear that this status quo is unacceptable and that in the absence of immediate changes, he would require the United States said in the summary.

Mrs. Bruce did not specify what these measures could be. When asked last month if he would discard military force behind his threats to claim the channel, which the United States controlled for almost a century, Trump refused to do so.

However, in statements to journalists after meeting with Mr. Rubio, Mulino repeatedly minimized the risk that Trump can take advantage of the channel. “There is no doubt that the channel is operated by Panama and will continue to be so,” he said. “I don’t think there is any discrepancy in that,” he said.

“I didn’t feel any threat,” Mulino said.

Trump has falsely affirmed that China “operates” to the channel, which was built by the United States in the early 1900s and was operated by Americans during most of the twentieth century. The agreements reached under the administration of President Jimmy Carter transferred him to Panamanian control in 1999.

Trump and Rubio have focused on the fact that a company based in Hong Kong, CK Hutchison Holdings, operates the sea ports at both ends of the river route. They claim that it represents a national security threat to the United States, suggesting that the Chinese government could order the company to obstruct shipping. Many experts are skeptical of that statement.

Rubio said Trump had determined that the Chinese connection with the channel violated a treaty aimed at guaranteeing its neutrality.

Mr. Mulino said after Sunday’s conversations that his government would decide what steps take after receiving the results of an audit of CK Hutchison that he had recently ordered. “We have to wait for that audit to reach our own legal conclusions and act in agreement,” Mulino said, he had told Mr. Rubio. He suggested that this was an area in which “there could be updates.”

Trump is not the first US president to worry about hostile interference with the channel. During World War II, the Roosevelt administration acted to defend the river route of Nazi sabotage plans. During the Cold War, the presidents worried about the United States Diplomatic Cable of 1951 called “Communist designs on the channel”.

Later, on Sunday, Mr. Rubio traveled to the channel itself, touring the Miraflores locks near the central city of Panama, where the ships move along the 51 -mile channel that connects the Pacific Ocean with the Caribbean Sea . He met there with the channel administrator and toured a high control room, when a huge gasoline oil tanker with a brilliant orange helmet and Korean letters slowly approached.

Rubio is touring five Latin American nations on his first trip abroad as Mr. Trump’s main diplomat. It is scheduled to travel to El Salvador on Monday and then to Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.

During the comments to the employees of the American embassy in Panama City, Mr. Rubio, son of Cuban migrants, joked saying that he had told the attendees that he wanted to make his first visit “to a place where they speak Spanish, because I am bilingual “, proceeding to show its fluidity in the language.

Mr. Rubio acknowledged the complicated history of the United States with Panama, a former Colombian territory that was founded after the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt, looking at the potential of a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States, they supported the separatist separatists who declared independence in 1903.

Mr. Rubio said that the country “was born in many ways here as a result of the interests of the United States,” and said the relationship had had its “ups and downs.” Falls include an American invasion of the country in 1989 to arrest the country’s de facto ruler, General Manuel Noriega, for drug trafficking and extortion charges.

Before the visit of the Secretary of State, the Panaman flags covered the streets of the city of Panama and the old area of ​​the channel, where they were once prohibited during the era of American control.

Hitting a warmer tone than in the severe passages on the channel, the summary of Mrs. Bruce said that Rubio had “thanked President Mulino for his support for a joint repatriation program” that had reduced migration through the gap From Darién, the dangerous route between Colombia and Panama that has become an entrance door for hundreds of thousands of migrants every year.

Mr. Mulino said that the two men had discussed the expansion of an agreement in July that Mr. Mulino did with the Biden administration aimed at adjusting the security in the gap, and that he had offered Mr. Rubio the use of a Air pulls for airplanes to repatriate migrants. In his comments, Mr. Mulino said there had been a 94 percent drop in the number of migrants passing through Darién’s gap to Panama last month, compared to January 2024.

Mr. Mulino also said Sunday that Panama, that in 2017 became the first country in the region to sign the Belt and Road initiative of China, a long -range infrastructure program, would not renew the agreement. He said he expected the withdrawal to promote the United States to assume a more active role in projects in Panama.

In recent years, said Mr. Mulino, the United States had left “a lot of empty space” for others to fill. After announcing the expulsion of the Chinese program, Mr. Mulino said: “I think this visit opens a path to the construction of a new era in relations.”

Mary Triton Zea Contributed reports from Panama City.