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Article: U.S., Panama Study Ways to Alter, Bypass Canal;Proposals Could Improve the Waterway or Render It Technically Obsolete by Year 2000
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- April 4, 1988
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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While worried how the present crisis in Panama might bode for the
future of the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal, the Reagan administration
is taking steps that might render the strategic and historic waterway
irrelevant by the time Panama gets control of it 12 years from now.
Scientists from the United States, Japan and Panama are
conducting a $20 million, five-year study, instigated by the State
Department, to determine whether the canal will be a white elephant
in 2000, when Panama inherits it. If they conclude that the
waterway, by then nearly a century old, will be unable to compete
with technological advances that are beginning to transform the
shipping world, then the United States and ...