The president of Panama on Thursday denied a U.S. State Department claim that it reached an agreement to allow American warships to transit the Panama Canal for free.

“I completely reject that statement yesterday,” Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino said during his weekly press conference, adding that he had asked Panama’s ambassador in Washington to dispute the State Department’s statement.

Mulino also said that he had told U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Wednesday that he could neither set the fees to transit the canal nor exempt anyone from them and that he was surprised by the U.S. State Department’s statement suggesting otherwise late Wednesday.

Mulino said that the State Department statement “really surprises me because they’re making an important, institutional statement from the entity that governs United States foreign policy under the president of the United States based on a falsity. And that’s intolerable.”