unitex@rubbs.fidonet.org (unitex) (08/14/89)
UN SECURITY COUNCIL: -- TAKE 6
Continuing, Mr. OKUN (United States) said the truth regarding United
States activities in Panama was simple and openly verifiable. The "canard"
that the United States was trying to rescind the Canal treaties should be put
to rest. The United States had entered into those treaties because it had
judged that they served its national interests. They continued to serve its
national interests and those of world commerce. They were enshrined in
international law and under the Constitution as the law of the land.
All United States military current activities in Panama were conducted in
complete accord with the Panama Canal Treaties, without exception, he said.
Mr. Ritter knew that fully well, but hoped that his audience did not. Mr.
Ritter hoped that a fraudulent appeal to the principle of non-intervention
would lead the Council to overlook General Noriega's violent and willful
denial of his people's right to self-determination through fair, free
elections and peaceful protest.
He said that since February 1988, the Noriega regime had violated various
provisions of the Panama Canal Treaties on almost 900 separate occasions --
all of them deliberate and many of them serious. Many of those violations had
involved threats to and physical abuse of members of the United States armed
forces stationed in Panama. In addition, over the past 16 months, the regime
had repeatedly sent armed patrols into areas in which the United States had
the right to control access under the Treaty. That has resulted in a number
of shooting incidents between United States and Panamanian forces, and the
accidental death of an American soldier.
The Government of the United States had shown extraordinary restraint in
response to treaty violations and other hostile actions by the Noriega regime,
he said. But President Bush had made clear in his address of 10 May,
following the Noriega regime's bloody and brutal repression of the democratic
opposition, that the United States would protect the safety of its personnel
and interests by exercising its rights under the Treaties. The augmentation
of United States military forces in Panama under the President's direction had
been in direct response to the hostile actions of the Noriega regime, he said.
(END OF TAKE 6)
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