Panama president rules out talks with Trump over canal threat [Video]

Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino on Thursday ruled out negotiations with Donald Trump over control of the Panama Canal, which the US president-elect threatened to demand be returned to Washington.

Mulino also rejected the possibility of reducing canal tolls for US vessels, and denied that China had any influence over the vital waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

“If there is an intention to talk, then there’s nothing to talk about,” Mulino told a weekly press conference.

“The canal is Panamanian and belongs to Panamanians. There’s no possibility of opening any kind of conversation around this reality, which has cost the country blood, sweat and tears,” he added.

The canal, inaugurated in 1914, was built by the United States but handed to Panama on December 31, 1999, under treaties signed some two decades earlier by then-US president Jimmy Carter and Panamanian nationalist leader Omar Torrijos.

Trump on Saturday slammed …