123. Memorandum From Secretary of State Vance to President Carter1
1. Panama Canal Treaty. The staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has told us that it expects the Committee to include in its resolution to ratify the Panama Canal Treaties a declaration that the Treaties would not become effective until legislation implementing them has been enacted by Congress. The Treaties do not need such legislation to become law.
Such a declaration would, of course, give the House of Representatives (and perhaps as many as four Committees of the House) a role in determining whether and when ratification of the Treaties would occur. Opponents of the Treaties thereby would have additional avenues to attempt to prevent ratification from becoming effective.
We will talk with Sparkman and other key Committee members to try to head off this declaration. We have identified only two instances in which treaty ratification has been or will be conditioned upon enactment of implementing legislation (prisoner exchange treaties and the Genocide Convention),2 and several contrary precedents. Apart from [Page 341] the precedents, we think that such a declaration would be wholly inappropriate in the present situation.3
[Omitted here is information unrelated to Panama.]
- Source: Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Brzezinski Material, Subject File, Box 19, Evening Reports (State), 12/77. Secret. Carter initialed the memorandum and wrote: “Cy.”↩
- Presumably a reference to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by UNGA as General Assembly Resolution 260 on December 9, 1948.↩
- Carter wrote in the left margin: “I agree—Go all out to oppose this.” In a December 3 memorandum to Carter, Vance reported that, for the moment, such a declaration had been successfully forestalled and the SFRC would not push for it. (Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Brzezinski Material, Subject File, Box 19, Evening Reports (State), 12/77)↩