No Regrets Over Panama Canal

President Clinton says he has no regrets that the U.S. is handing over the Panama Canal to Panama on December 31, reports CBS News Correspondent Dan Raviv.

Mr. Clinton said Panama's elected government is committed to good relations, and keeping the Canal open.

"I supported it at the time and I still support it," he said, referring to the 1978 Panama Canal treaties requiring the United States to surrender control of the canal and to remove all U.S. troops by Dec. 31, 1999. "I think it's the right thing to do."

But the president won't attend the hand-over ceremony set for Dec. 14, two weeks before the legal transfer, saying he's busy with the budget and Congress.

The United States will be represented in Panama by former President Jimmy Carter, whose administration negotiated the treaties.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was also supposed to attend, but instead she'll be overseeing the newly announced Israel-Syria peace talks, a U.S. official said.

President Clinton said Carter "deserves enormous credit" for winning Senate passage of the treaties. He said they were "very controversial, immensely unpopular. A lot of the members of the Senate...had their seats put in peril over it."

He brushed off the notion that China was preparing to take over the canal once the United States leaves. Retired Adm. Thomas Moorer, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asserted earlier this month that China plans to seize control through a Hong Kong company, Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., which has won the right to operate ports on both ends of the canal. Moorer contended the firm has close links to the Chinese military.

"I think the Chinese will in fact be bending over backwards to make sure that they run it in a competent and able and fair manner," the president said. He compared the operation of the canal to China's campaign to win admission to the World Trade Organization, which sets the rules for global trade.

"They'll want to demonstrate to a distant part of the world that they can be a responsible partner," the president said. "And I would be very surprised if any adverse consequences flowed from the Chinese running the canal."

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