Panama City - Panama on Friday marked the 30th anniversary of a historic deal to hand over the Panama Canal with low-key celebrations, only four days after work started on expanding the world-famous passage, and even as the future of former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega was being decided in the United States. The agreements which Panamanian strongman Omar Torrijos and then US president Jimmy Carter signed on September 7, 1977 launched a process which concluded on December 31, 1999 with the United States handing control of the canal to Panamanian authorities.
The Panamanian Foreign Ministry organized a conference Friday to mark the anniversary, but the minister himself did not attend.
At the gathering, Adolfo Ahumada - a member of the Panama Canal board of directors and who participated in the run-up to the 1977 treaties - said that the crucial aspect of the treaties was the disappearance of the Canal Zone, one of the last colonial enclaves in Latin America, which until then was ruled by a governor and had foreign laws.
To mark the anniversary, the Panamanian government announced Friday the printing of a new postage stamp with the faces of Carter and Torrijos over the canal.
On Monday, more than 40,000 people including Carter and several Latin American presidents watched as President Martin Torrijos - the son of Omar Torrijos - detonated a first charge of 13,636 kilogrammes of explosives that launched the expansion of the waterway.
OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza and presidents Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, Elias Saca of El Salvador, Manuel Zelaya of Honduras and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua were present, as was US Senator Robert Byrd, whose vote was key for the approval of the 1977 treaties.
Carter, 82, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, noted that the treaties have become a symbol for global conflict resolution.
An engineering milestone through which between 13,000 and 14,000 ships pass each year, the Panama Canal was opened in 1914 by the United States, after 10 years of construction that cost thousands of lives. It was operated by the US for more than 85 years - a condition for US support of Panamanian independence from Colombia.
