President Donald Trump on Monday cast himself as a peacemaker in his second inaugural address, but immediately vowed that the United States would be “taking back” the Panama Canal.
Trump issued the threat without explaining details after weeks of refusing to rule out military action against Panama over the waterway, which the United States handed over at the end of 1999.
“Above all, China is operating the Panama Canal, and we didn’t give it to China, we gave it to Panama. And we’re taking it back,” Trump said after being sworn in inside the US Capitol.
Panama maintains control of the canal but Chinese companies have been steadily increasing their presence around the vital shipping link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino swiftly denied that any other nation was interfering in the canal, which he said his country operated with a principle of neutrality.
“I must comprehensively reject the words of President Donald Trump,” President Jose Raul Mulino said in a statement published on social media.
“The canal is and will remain Panama’s,” he added, dismissing Trump’s claim that China is operating the canal.
“There is no presence of any nation in the world that interferes,” Mulino said.
The canal was built by the United States and opened in 1914.
It was handed to Panama on December 31, 1999, under treaties signed some two decades earlier by then-US president Jimmy Carter and Panamanian nationalist leader Omar Torrijos.
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