Foreign Minister Marco Rubio begins this week on his first foreign trip in his position, heading to Central America to pressure President Donald Trump’s priority – curbing illegal immigration – and bringing a message that the United States wants to regain control of the Panama channel despite the severe resistance From regional leaders.
It is an extraordinary destination for the first trip for the senior diplomats in America, whose predecessors prefer Europe or Asia in general over their initial outputs. It not only reflects the personal interest of Rubio – the first Spanish origin holding the largest position in the country – but also the intention of the Trump administration to focus a lot of its energy in its foreign policy near the house.
“It is not a coincidence that my first trip will keep me abroad as foreign minister in the hemisphere,” Rubio wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Friday.
Reducing immigration and combating drug smuggling is major elements in this effort, but another major priority is to curb China’s increasing influence in the Western hemisphere, which is issued by the re -creation of US control on Panama. The American channel, which he designed to the Banmeans, was handed over in 1999 and strongly objected to Trump’s request to restore it.
In the opinion article in the magazines, Rubio said that collective migration, drugs, and hostile policies followed by Cuba, Nicaroa and Venezuela had sparked corruption. “All the time, the Chinese Communist Party uses a diplomatic and economic crane – as in the Panama Channel – to oppose the United States and turn sovereign countries into affiliate states.”
In fact, the first leg of the Rubio in the five -state tour on Saturday will be Panama, whose president Jose Raul Mulino says there will be no negotiation with the United States over the ownership of the channel. He said he hoped to focus Rubio’s visit instead on common interests such as migration and combating drug smuggling.
“This is impossible, I cannot negotiate,” Mulino said on Thursday. “The channel belongs to Panama.”
However, Rubio said he would explain Trump’s intention. In an interview on Thursday with the Siriusxm Megyn Kelly host, he said that Trump’s desire to regain control of the Panama channel is driven by the legitimate national security interests caused by the increasing concerns about Chinese activity and influence in Latin America.
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“We will address this topic,” he said. “The president was quite clear that he wanted to manage the channel again. It is clear that the Banmeans are not a big fans of this idea. This message was brought very clear.”
He said that Chinese investments in the ports and other infrastructure and facilities in both the quiet and Caribbean parties of the channel are the cause of extreme anxiety, leaving Panama and the critical shipping road exposed to China.
“If China wants to obstruct traffic on the Panama channel, they can do so,”
Although Molino rejected any negotiations on ownership, some believe that Panama may be open to a solution according to which the canal operations are removed on both sides of Hong Kong ports based in Hong Kong, which has been granted a 25 -year -old operation extension. Checking the suitability of this extension is already underway and may lead to a redistribution process.
What is unclear is whether Trump will accept the transfer of the concession to an American or European company as it meets his demands, which seem to cover more than just operations.
“In some respects, Trump pays an open door,” said Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research center in Washington. “But it will depend on how to define his red lines.”
“There was a lot of heavy discourse and it will be to clarify this,” Berg said, adding that a kind of settlement was possible. “But we have to see whether he was serious about his recovery. If this is the case, nothing less than that will satisfy him. .
Rubio will arrive in Panama on Saturday to attend the meetings the next day with Mulino and the channel official. Then he travels to El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.
His arrival will come just one day after the United States will resume the visa processing at its embassy in Bogota, Colombia, which was closed on Sunday after the Colombian government refused to accept two Colombian lessons from the United States.
The former state secretaries often traveled abroad with the so-called “products”-assistance packages, new cooperation initiatives and the like-they can announce it at each station. However, as with Colombia, Rubio may not be able to achieve a limited comfort from the United States’ freezing on external assistance that Trump ordered a review time for all programs.
In Latin America, such programs were generally focused on police operations, Counarnarcotics and the efforts made to illegal collapse. Rubio puts provisions for some programs that provide life -saving assistance that is exempt from the pause, and relinquishes the requests of programs in many countries that he will visit.
Among the countries that have been presented to some programs are Panama, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and its neighbor Haiti. Although Rubio will not travel to Haiti, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already allowed about $ 41 million to support the international peacekeeping force there to move forward.
And copied 2025 Canadian press
