File No. 2491/54–56.

The Secretary of State to Minister Squiers.

No. 150.]

Sir: Your dispatch, No. 416, of the 12th instant, in relation to the Costa Rican-Panama boundary controversy, has been received. You report the result of your action upon the department’s telegraphic instructions of December 31, proposing points to be submitted to a new arbitration, and inclose copy of the reply of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. It is therein stated that Panama declines to submit the matter to a new decision at this time; that it is intended to send to Costa Rica a mission in order that the two Republics may arrive at an amicable settlement; and that, in the event of a failure to arrive at such a settlement, after exhausting all proper efforts, Panama will then be pleased to accept the good offices of the United States and to submit the question to the Chief Justice of the United States.

For three years and more this Government has repeatedly and urgently shown its earnest desire and expectation that the conflicting claims of Panama and Costa Rica in regard to their common boundary should be set at rest. The interest of the United States in seeing the dispute settled has been continuously manifested and the grounds of our interest clearly set forth. At the time of Panama independence there were important American interests on the border, upon the Sixola River, to which rival American citizens were claimants. The determination of their conflicting claims was and still is dependent upon the issue of the question of sovereign title to the territory and sovereign jurisdiction over controversies arising therein. The situation thus arising has been from the outset most embarrassing and vexatious to the United States and this embarrassment and vexation must continue so long as the determination of sovereign title is in suspense.

This Government welcomed with gratification the institution of negotiations between Panama and Costa Rica looking to a final fixation of their common boundary. It put forward every friendly effort toward the ratification of the treaty signed by them March 7, 1905. The consummation of that treaty was indefinitely deferred because of the amendment introduced in the Panama act of ratification. Again out efforts were put forth to effect a renewal of negotiations on conventional lines. Thereupon Costa Rica proposed arbitration. The United States supported this proposal as having become apparently the only manner of bringing about the settlement of a controversy the continuance of which bore so heavily on American interests. The acceptance of the arbitration in principle by Panama on December 24 last was hailed by us with a feeling of relief, as a hopeful augury of a speedy disposition of the question. The communication now made to you by Señor Fernandez holds the Panaman acceptance in abeyance by contingently deferring the resort to arbitration to await the uncertain outcome of a proposal to reopen direct negotiations for adjustment of the dispute by mutual agreement. This step is disappointing, because tending to excite our apprehension that this fresh resort to direct negotiations may prove as ineffectual [Page 782] as previous efforts in that direction, and may turn out to have merely dilatory results so far as a final settlement is concerned, and that an agreement may be found as remote as at the beginning of the dispute.

All this constrains the Government of the United States to the conclusion that the conditions existing for years and still existing are such as they force the United States in justice to its own citizens to treat the de facto line as the line to the north of which Costa Rica has jurisdiction and to the south of which Panaman jurisdiction is recognized. In other words to hold that, in as much as the territory northward of the de facto line is left by Panama within the actual jurisdiction and control of Costa Rica, Panama is estopped by her own act from objecting to the United States treating it as Costa Rican territory, and looking to Costa Rica to remedy the annoying and embarrassing situation caused to this Government and to its citizens by the absence of responsible jurisdiction in that quarter.

You will make the position of the United States in this regard clear to the Panaman minister for foreign affairs by reading this instruction to him and handing him a copy.

I am, etc.,

Elihu Root.