PANAMA CITY (Dispatches) -- The status of the Panama Canal is non-negotiable, President Jose Raul Mulino said in a statement signed alongside former leaders of the country, after Donald Trump’s recent threats to reclaim the man-made waterway.
The U.S. president-elect on Saturday had slammed what he called unfair fees for U.S. ships passing through the Panama Canal and threatened to demand control of the waterway be returned to Washington.
Mulino dismissed Trump’s comments, saying “every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent areas belongs to Panama and will continue belonging to Panama”.
He reiterated in a statement -- also signed by former presidents Ernesto Perez Balladares, Martin Torrijos and Mireya Moscoso -- that “the sovereignty of our country and our canal are not negotiable.”
The canal “is part of our history of struggle and an irreversible conquest,” read the statement, which the four politicians had signed after a meeting at the seat of the Panamanian government.
“Panamanians may think differently in many aspects, but when it comes to our canal and our sovereignty, we all unite under the same flag.” 
Former leader Laurentino Cortizo, who did not attend the meeting, also showed support for the statement on social media, as did ex-president Ricardo Martinelli. 
The 80-kilometer (50-mile) Panama Canal carries five percent of the world’s maritime trade. Its main users are the United States, China, Japan, South Korea and Chile.
It was completed by the United States in 1914, and then returned to the Central American country under a 1977 deal signed by Democratic president Jimmy Carter.
Panama took full control in 1999.
In the past week, Trump has also taunted Canadian officials by suggesting the U.S. could absorb its northern neighbor and make it the 51st state. And on Sunday, he resurfaced his first-term desire to obtain Greenland, a Danish territory he has long eyed.
He called ownership of Greenland an “absolute necessity” for “purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World.”
Speaking in Arizona this weekend, Trump also reiterated plans to designate drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, a distinction that could preface the use of military force on Mexican soil. Trump has threatened to drop bombs on fentanyl labs and send special forces to take out cartel leaders, an incursion that could violate Mexico’s sovereignty and disrupt relations with the United States’ largest trading partner.