Panama

MIRAFLORES, Panama - Stacked skyscraper-high with clothes and computers from the Far East, the Hanjin Tokyo cargo ship squeezes through Panama Canal's Miraflores Locks as scores of tourists gasp at the scant two feet between the giant carrier and the viewing platform's edge. Ninety minutes later, the ship - so big that 4,000 trailer-truck-sized containers can fit on board - slides past the massive steel gates and steams up the world's most famous shortcut. Once, the canal many Panamanians call the "big ditch" was so vital to shipping routes that cargo carriers were built with the dimensions of the canal's three sets of locks in mind.

On Dec. 31, lots of you celebrated the new year arriving. In Panama, there was extra celebration because the country took over the Panama Canal. It was the fair thing to do, U.S. leaders decided, since the famous canal runs through the small Central American country. Since the canal was finished in 1914, the United States had owned and operated the 50-mile-long route that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. J The Panama Canal is an engineering marvel. When people first thought of digging a canal through Panama, many builders scoffed.

THE HANDOVER of the Panama Canal to Panama at midday Friday will be a symbolic non-event along a smooth transition that has been taking place for two decades.Whether this is a good idea was hotly debated before the treaty was ratified by one vote in the Senate in 1978. Now, it is a done deal.The canal was started in 1881 by a French company that failed. The United States conspired to tear Panama from Colombia in 1903, in return for getting a 10-mile zone wherein the United States was effectively sovereign and would build the canal.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton left open the possibility that a 6-year-old Cuban boy caught in a fractious, international custody dispute could remain in the United States, though he vowed that "that politics or threats" would not determine the boy's fate.In an hour-long news conference that roved from the future of his marriage to the fate of the Panama Canal, Clinton tried to sum up a tumultuous year that started with his impeachment trial and will end weeks after the collapse of trade talks in Seattle.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton will rebuff a personal appeal from the president of Panama and skip next month's politically freighted ceremony at which the United States will hand over control of the Panama Canal, administration officials said yesterday. The White House had been deeply divided between policy experts who implored Clinton to go and political advisers who feared that the image of the president turning over control of the canal would damage Clinton's would-be successor, Vice President Al Gore.

AT HIGH noon on Dec. 31, the last day of the 1900s, the Republic of Panama will at last achieve what it has always proclaimed as its destiny: full sovereignty over of the inter-ocean canal that the gringos built in the heyday of U.S. imperialism.At that moment, the United States will cede control over the Panama Canal Zone to a government that has yet to prove its competence to maintain and operate one of the planet's great maritime choke points.The construction of the Panama Canal from 1903 to 1914 was an engineering marvel that heralded America's emergence as a world power.

WITH the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama scheduled for December 31, the canal's capacity will receive increased attention.Although 92 percent of the world's oceangoing vessels still are able to transit the waterway, the trend is clearly to larger ships. Only 82 percent of the vessels on today's drawing boards will be able to clear the canal's 1,000-by-110-foot locks.Will it be necessary to enlarge the canal? The answer really depends on whose shoes you are walking in. Putting nationalistic pride aside, the real issue is the price tag that must be paid for any enlargement.

MIREYA Moscoso, the new president of Panama, is not the only foreign leader educated in the United States, but she is the first with a degree in interior decorating from Miami-Dade Community College.Ms. Moscoso, elected in May, heads a party that is weaker in the legislature than its opposition. In recent days, she hammered out agreements with minor parties to give her a bare working majority, vulnerable to defections.Her government will take over the Panama Canal on Dec. 31, under the treaty signed by President Jimmy Carter and the Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos in 1977.

THIS YEAR, Panamanians erected a symbol of national pride. In downtown Panama City near the sea, there stands a giant clock that ticks off the time until the United States officially leaves the Canal Zone.Because the United States will hand over control of the canal at the end of this year, the clock also stands as a countdown to the millennium, a new age for Panama. But, as Panama moves toward this major transition, questions are pursed on the lips of experts from the Canal Zone to Washington about the fate of this country that straddles the isthmus of our hemisphere.

BALBOA, Panama -- To Americans, the Panama Canal is an icon of progress and engineering know-how. But to Panamanians, who are about to start running it, the canal represents a spillway of wealth.Since the canal opened in 1914, more than 700,000 ships have passed through its locks, shelling out billions of dollars in user fees. The 50-mile transit can cost ships as much as $100,000.Panamanian officials, who begin operating the canal Dec. 31, believe it will become an even bigger moneymaker.