- 34 -

So let there be no doubt about our views any longer. We strongly favor a world trading system which meets the economic needs of both consumers and producers. Unilateral producer or unilateral consumer actions must not determine the equilibrium. A dialogue between them on commodity issues is therefore essential. A range of rich possibilities exists that can make our new interdependence a vehicle for more rapid and more equitable global development.

The time has come for the countries of the Western Hemisphere to consider together how commodity issues should be resolved. The United States pledges a serious effort to find a constructive solution which does justice to the concerns of all parties.

- 35 -

**Food** -- Let me turn now to a subject which must command
our cooperative efforts -- food, man's most basic need.

Latin America matches the United States as a potential
food surplus region. Yet over the past 15 years, Latin
American agricultural production has barely kept pace with
population. In an area rich in productive land, malnutrition
is rife. Most Latin American countries are net food importers.
We believe that with a concerted new effort, agricultural
production can exceed population growth; adequate nutrition
for all can be achieved in this century; and Latin America
can become a major food exporter.

The immediate need is to improve food production. The
U.S. proposes the establishment of a Hemisphere Agricultural
Consultative Group under the Inter-American Development Bank. Its

-36-

goal should be to generate annual production increases in
the range of 3-1/2 to 4 percent, to be achieved through:

- new investment in regional and national agricultural programs;

- integration of agricultural research efforts throughout the Hemisphere;

- adoption of improved national food and nutrition programs.

The consultative group should also recommend urgent steps to reduce the waste and spoilage now consuming between 20 and 40 percent of total Latin American food output.

[ Agricultural research is a central element in attaining adequate nutrition for all. But too often research is unrelated to local needs and efforts elsewhere. ]

-37-

To make agricultural research more adequately serve local needs, we will assist the international research centers in Mexico, Colombia, and Peru to extend their projects and programs to other countries in the hemisphere through closer collaboration with national research institutions.

[To foster better exchange of agricultural research information, we propose that a new center be established for Latin America, under the auspices of the Hemisphere Consultative Group,] and by linking it to the Agricultural Information Exchange Center of the Smithsonian Institute in the United States.

[The United States is prepared to join with other countries and institutions to finance the local extension efforts of the international research centers and the information exchange center.]

-38-

Finally, we propose that the U.S. and Latin America jointly establish and finance research centers in nutrition and food technology; that a new generation of Latin American agriculturalists be trained through internships and research in these centers as well as in government and private laboratories and institutions in both continents.

## The Human Dimension

Our immediate economic, political, and technological imperatives must not lead us to neglect the human foundations of our common progress, including the free exchange of ideas and the priceless cultural heritage we share.

The discovery of America rekindled a belief in mankind's perfectibility. Our struggles for independence were among the first modern assertions of the fundamental rights of man. No part of the globe has shown a greater commitment to

-39-

democratic principles. The free flow of ideas is one of
the most powerful forces for both liberty and progress.
Drawing on this resource, can we now fashion a common
vision of the Future? What will life in the Americas be like
in the next century? The scientists, scholars and professionals
of our countries should be exchanging ideas on the implications
of current trends in such areas as education, health and
social change. Our governments should stimulate the OAS
to mobilize the best minds and institutions of the hemisphere
in new programs to define our common future.

Last year in Mexico City, I described our objectives
in this hemisphere as follows:

"Our common impulse...is to fulfill the promise of
America as a continent which beckoned men to fulfill what
was best in them.

- 40 -

"Our common reality is the recognition of our diversity.

"Our common task is to forge our historical and geographical links into shared purpose and endeavor."

The United States continues to seek a genuine dialogue with its neighbors on all levels: multilaterally and bilaterally, within or outside the OAS, with subregional groups or individual states.

The dream of hope that has lifted the Americas for almost five centuries must be revitalized by our generation. We are entering another new world as strange and challenging as that found by the first settlers on America's shores. With imagination, we can build in this hemisphere the model of that larger world community which must be our ultimate goal.

As Victor Hugo once wrote, "The main highway lies open. May America travel it, and the world will follow."

14th draft

2/27/75

THE UNITED STATES AND LATIN AMERICA:
THE NEW OPPORTUNITY

The foreign policy of the United States has one over-
riding goal to develop a new structure of international relations
based on cooperation rather than force; to help shape an
international system which settles disputes by negotiation and
frees peoples to focus on their positive aspirations rather than
the accumulation of arms.

Our relationship to the Western Hemisphere is central
to this enterprise. The United States and Latin America were
born out of the struggle against tyranny. Our peoples are
bound not only by geography but by the common heritage of
Western civilization, a history of mutual support in times of
trouble and the promise of a new world of justice, peace,
freedom and prosperity. This bond has linked our destinies for
almost two centuries. With courage and imagination we now

- 2 -

have the opportunity to make inter-American cooperation a
pillar of the global community which our era demands.

The discovery of America, more than any other single
event, ended the Middle Ages and revolutionized the thought
of mankind. It drew man beyond what had come to seem
unchangeable, to a new beginning, an escape from the
burdens of the past, and from history itself.

An epic poem of the seventeenth century described the
lure that beckoned the Americas onward:

"... to open new paths never trod, never known...

to push on despite obstacles through every zone..."

With the shield of one ocean at our backs and the dream of
another before us, hope was always just a little father along
the river, over the mountains, across the plains and jungles.

- 3 -

In the old world a frontier was a limit; in the New World it
was an opportunity.

Today's frontiers are not geographical, but frontiers
of human need and creativity. To conquer them is even more
important, and exciting, than the adventures that shaped our
past.

At the heart of our contemporary challenge is a new
interdependence, both hemispheric and global. Until recently,
Western Hemisphere economic relationships were largely
based on the exchange of raw materials from Latin America
for finished goods from the United States. Today's inter-
dependence reflects a different balance. The international-
ization of production combines technology, labor and capital
across national boundaries.

- 4 -

As a result, the Latin American countries now need access to the U.S. market to sell their manufactured goods as well as their traditional exports. And Latin America's markets are becoming as important to our own continued growth as its raw materials -- as indicated by our trade surplus last year of $1.2 billion.

As interdependence has grown within the hemisphere, it has linked the hemisphere to other parts of the world. Latin America has developed important trading relationships with other industrial nations and has come to share certain political perspectives with the Third World. The United States prizes its traditional alliances with the industrialized democracies, and maintains important political and economic relationships with many less developed nations around the world.

- 5 -

Our generation has had to learn that peace is indivisible;

that our well-being is intimately tied to the well-being of the

rest of the globe.

The awareness of past achievement and faith in common
purposes led the United States in 1973 to begin a new dialogue
with Latin America. We had three objectives in encouraging
this effort:

-- To promote with our friends a new spirit of communication tempered by realism, elevated by hope and not weighed down by distrust, despair or resentment.

-- To find new ways to combine our efforts in the political, economic and social development of the hemisphere;

-- And to recognize that the global dialogue between the developed and less developed nations requires answers that will be difficult to find anywhere if we do not find them in

- 6 -

Western Hemisphere.

For this hemisphere to which men fled to escape from
injustice has a special obligation to demonstrate that progress
can go hand in hand with respect for human dignity, that
cooperation among nations is not at odds with respect for
national sovereignty, that the most powerful political force
on earth is the voluntary collaboration of free peoples.

Any relationship as long and complex as ours inevitably
is haunted by the bitterness and suspicions of old disputes.
We must put behind us these legacies of our past for a
dialogue dominated by the endless refrain of old grievances
cannot prosper.

Despite disappointments and temporary interruptions,
the United States is determined to continue the dialogue in a

- 7 -

spirit of friendship and conciliation. Next month I will make
my first visit to South America as Secretary of State. Next
week Assistant Secretary Rogers will visit six countries
in the region for preliminary discussions.

Let me now discuss first, what the United States is
prepared to contribute to a Western Hemisphere cooperation;
second, what we ask of Latin America; and finally what we can
do together.

## What We Must Ask of Ourselves

The United States will bring to this dialogue a commitment at the highest level to adapt our political and economic relations to a new era. We shall strive for a new relationship between the United States and Latin America based on the principles of non-intervention, the sovereign equality of nations and mutual respect among partners. We ask only that our

Western Hemisphere neighbors meet us in the same spirit.

On the foundations of these principles the United States
is prepared to solve the major issues that have risen between
us -- the status of the Panama Canal; the place of Cuba in
the hemisphere; and the various strands of our economic
relations.

The Panama Canal

Since its opening, the peoples of the world have
looked on the Panama Canal as an important lifeline of
commerce and international security. The United States
considers it a vital interest that the canal remain open to the
ships of all nations on fair terms.

In acquiring the rights to build the Canal, the United
States was granted exclusive control -- the rights which
it would possess and exercise "if it were sovereign" -- over

a ten-mile wide strip of Panamanian territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In the Canal Zone, we enforce U.S. laws, operate commercial enterprises and control most of the deepwater port facilities that serve Panama.

Over time this massive U.S. presence has come to be viewed by the people of Panama -- and indeed by most of the rest of the Hemisphere -- as an infringement upon their national sovereignty and their principal resource -- their country's strategic location.

Clearly both Panama and the United States have vital interests in the canal. The challenge is to reconcile the security needs of the United States with Panama's national honor and sovereignty. Negotiations on this problem have taken place intermittently for eleven years, in the last year and a half they have moved forward rapidly. We now believe

- 10 -

that an agreement on terms fair to all is possible.

We have made this progress because each side recognizes
the essential needs and constraints of the other. The United
States is prepared to accept that a treaty negotiated in 1903
does not meet the requirements of 1975. We are ready to
acknowledge that it is reasonable for Panama to exercise
jurisdiction over its territory and to participate in the opera-
tion and defense of the Canal. We are prepared to modify
arrangements which conflict with Panamanian dignity and
self-respect.

In turn we will expect Panama to understand our per-
spective -- that the efficient, fair and secure operation of the
Canal is a vital economic and security interest of the United
States; that a new treaty must provide for the operation and
defense of the Canal by the United States for an extended

- 12 -

A new treaty based on these premises would make the
United States and Panama partners in the operation of the
Canal, protect the essential national interests of both and
provide a secure arrangement for the long term.

Serious problems still must be resolved. But we are
confident that the remaining obstacles can be overcome if
both parties continue to display good will and mutual under-
standing.

The Administration has been consulting regularly with
the Congress as our negotiations have progressed. We will
intensify these consultations and discuss in detail the arrange-
ments which we envisage. A new treaty which reflects the
advice and consent of the Senate and the full support of the
American people will be a major symbol of the possibility of

- 13 -

cooperative solutions to the problems of the Western Hemisphere.

Cuba

In January 1962 the Organization of American States found
that Cuba had excluded itself from participation in the inter-
American community by its military ties to the Soviet Union
and its export of revolution in the Hemisphere. A month later,
the United States imposed its own legislative sanctions. In
1964 the member nations of the OAS agreed collectively to
sever diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba.

More than a decade has passed. The countries of Latin
American have successfully resisted pressure and subversion;
nations that in the early '60's felt most threatened by Cuban
revolutionary violence have begun to shift to a new approach.
Certain aspects of Cuban policy continue to pose difficulties,
and we must thus proceed deliberately. Nevertheless, the new

-14-

situation has generated pressures for lifting the OAS sanctions
and raised questions about the future of our own bilateral
relations with Cuba.

Last September several Latin American countries
proposed a meeting to consider lifting the collective sanctions.
We agreed that a consideration of the Cuban issue was appro-
priate. We remained neutral in the debate at the Quito meeting.
Our guiding principle was to prevent the Cuba issue from dividing
us from our Hemispheric neighbors.

A majority voted to lift the collective sanctions. But the
Rio Treaty requires a two thirds vote and the sanctions thus
remain in force. However, all the OAS nations have since
agreed informally that the Rio Treaty should be amended to
permit the lifting of sanctions by a majority vote.

- 15 -

Several Latin American countries have suggested that this agreement in principle should be formalized. The United States will go along with this view. At the forthcoming annual meeting of the OAS, the US will support a Latin proposal that the original 1964 sanctions resolution be amended to provide that the existing Cuban sanctions can be lifted by a majority vote of the Permanent Council of the Organization. The action at the annual meeting will not actually remove the sanctions; it will make it possible for the majority to determine the question of the Cuban sanctions at a later meeting.

As for our own bilateral relations with Cuba, there can, of course, be no change as long as the OAS mandate remains in force. Should the OAS sanctions be altered, the United States will consider changes in our relations with Cuba and in

- 16 -

our own legislation in the light of our own interests and the
external policies of the Cuban government. We see no virtue
in perpetual antagonism between the United States and Cuba.

Our concerns relate less to Cuba's domestic system than to
its external policies and military relationships with countries
outside the Hemisphere. We have already taken some symbolic
steps to demonstrate the direction in which we are prepared to
move. But fundamental change will not come unless Cuba demon-
strates a readiness to assume the mutuality of obligation and
regard upon which a new relationship must be founded.

## Economic Relations

Old political grievances should not distract us from the
real business of the hemispheric community -- the common
effort to improve lives of our peoples. Let us turn to these
positive issues of our association.

-17-

The expansion of trade, and the establishment of a new
equilibrium in our trading relations, is vital to economic progress
and development in Latin America. As Latin American economies
grow, so will opportunities for increased mutual trade. As
our economy grows, we will find it in our interest to buy more
semi-processed and manufactured goods from Latin America.

In the next few days the President will take the first step
to implement the Preference system of the 1974 Trade Act by
announcing the list of products on which the Administration
proposes to eliminate all import tariffs for developing countries
for ten years. Latin America, as the most advanced developing
region and the one nearest the U.S. market, will be in the
best position to take advantage of these preferences. Our list
will benefit nearly $1 billion of Latin American exports.

Among the economic issues affecting Western Hemisphere

- 18 -

relations none looms larger than the transnational corporation.

On the one hand, the transnational corporation has a demonstrated record of achievement as an efficient -- and indeed indispensable -- purveyor of technology, management skill, and capital for development. At the same time, the transnational character of these corporations raises complex problems of governmental regulation, and has aroused concern in Latin America over how their activities can be reconciled with domestic political and economic priorities.

Most nations of Latin America take the position that the laws of the host country are conclusive, and that a foreign investor cannot appeal to his own government for protection.

But the United States has insisted on espousing the cause of U.S. investors when they are treated in a way which violates international legal standards. And the Congress has reflected

- 19 -

this view in such acts as the Hickenlooper and Gonzales

Amendments which provide for the automatic cut-off of aid

in the event of nationalization without adequate and timely

compensation.

The two legal positions are not easily reconciled. But

the United States is prepared to make a serious effort to find

a mutually acceptable solution. A year ago, at our initiative

at Mexico City, an inter-American working group was set up

to examine the problem.

The United States is prepared:

- to work out a new declaration of principles relating
to transnational enterprises and the transfer of
technology;

- to develop intergovernmental mechanisms to prevent
and resolve investment disputes and the problems
between governments that arise from them;

- 20 -

-- to fashion new modes of cooperation to deal with
conflicts of laws and jurisdiction relating to trans-
national corporations; and

-- to encourage the efforts of private enterprise to make
its vital contributions available to Latin America in
forms and arrangements congenial to the economic
and political needs of the countries concerned.

This Working Group, which was interrupted by the postponement
of the Buenos Aires meeting, should resume its important
efforts. A mutually acceptable solution would go a long way
toward removing these disputes as factors in U.S. decisions
respecting aid relationships with the host countries.

Latin American sensitivity to the exercise of economic
leverage has been finely honed by historical experience.

- 21 -

Experience has also demonstrated that automatic sanctions -- including the 1974 Trade Act; denial of preferences to Ecuador and Venezuela which did not join in the oil embargo, are almost always counterproductive. Automatic sanctions allow no tactical flexibility. They present other governments with a public ultimatum. By seeming to challenge the recipient's sovereignty, they harden positions, encumber diplomacy and poison the entire range of our relationship.

The Administration is prepared to seek the modification of the Hickenlooper and Gonzales amendments and it supports the purpose of the various bills which have been introduced to modify the provisions of the Trade Act which involve Venezuela and Ecuador. But as a matter of political reality a great deal will depend on our ability to work with Latin America on new approaches which give practical assurance of fair treatment.

The Latin American nations must recognize that Congressional sanctions stem from perceived injuries to legitimate interests.

As part of the New Dialogue, the Administration is prepared to develop new principles and practices which may commend themselves to Congress as a better solution than automatic sanctions.

## What Latin America Can Do

What do we have a right to expect from Latin America?

In the past decade, progress in science, industry, agriculture, and education have done much to transform the Continent. Economic growth has been steady and sometimes spectacular. Political institutions have adapted to new social conditions and national traditions. A new sense of Latin American unity has promoted an awareness of common problems and opportunities.

- 23 -

We welcome the new strength and self-confidence that
has accompanied this evolution. We have seen new leadership
in Latin America and new Latin American leadership in the
international arena. Panamanian and Peruvian soldiers are
part of the UN peace-keeping forces in the Middle East. Last
December the Andean countries, following a Peruvian initiative,
pledged themselves to limit the acquisition of offensive weapons --
an initiative we support and encourage. Venezuela has taken
the lead in stimulating regional cooperation by offering oil
revenues to the Inter-American Bank and the Central American
Bank for Economic Integration. Working with Bolivia, Paraguay,
and Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil are pooling their technology
and resources to harness the vast potential of the River Plate
Basin.

These welcome initiatives are balanced however by other
less hopeful trends.

The United States in increasingly concerned about the
growing tendency of some Latin American countries to
participate in tactics of confrontation between the developing
and developed worlds. We accept non-alignment as a necessary,
largely positive force. We believe that the developed nations --
and particularly the United States as the most powerful industrial
country -- have a special obligation to be sensitive to the im-
peratives of change.

It is therefore ironic that some nations seek to extract
by confrontation what is being freely offered, and that countries
which once chose nonalignment to protect themselves from
blocs are now tending to form a rigid bloc of their own. In
doing so they not only foreswear their freedom of action but
obstruct the cooperation with the industrialized nations on
which their own economic and social progress depends.

-25-

This will surely prove self-defeating. Such tactics are particularly inappropriate for the Western Hemisphere where they threaten to repudiate a tradition of cooperative relations with the United States at the very moment when the United States has dedicated itself to common progress.

As the most developed part of the Third World, Latin American nations will increasingly play roles in both the industrialized and developing sectors of the globe. This offers a unique opportunity for Latin American to foster the mutual accommodation of these groups.

But to do so, the Latin American nations should keep in mind the Declaration signed by all Western Hemisphere nations in Mexico City last year: "...peace and progress, in order to be solid and enduring, must always be based on respect for the rights of others and the recognition of

- 26 -

reciprocal responsibilities and obligations among developed
and developing countries."

The temptation to blame disappointments on the intrigues,
and excesses of foreigners is as old as nations themselves.

The temptation is constant to demonstrate Latin American
independence and unity through opposition to the United
States. Such attitudes and reactions may have served pur-
poses in the past -- but never have they been more divorced
from reality than today. They distract us from our problems
and block the search for solutions.

The Latin American postponement of the Buenos Aires
meeting of Foreign Ministers ostensibly in reaction to the
Trade Act is a case in point. The Latin American nations
chose to read into this provision a coercive intent which did

- 27 -

not exist and asked for remedies beyond the capacity of our
constitutional processes to provide rapidly. As a result,
the next step in the new dialogue has been delayed just when
it was most needed. The nations of America face too many
challenges to permit their energies to be expended in such
fruitless confrontations.

We do not expect agreement with all our views, but
neither can we accept a new version of paternalism, in which
those with obligations have no rights, and those that claim
rights accept no obligations. The choice for the United
States is not between domination and indifference. The choice
for Latin America is not between submission and confrontation.

Instead we can steer between those extremes toward
a new equilibrium. After decades of oscillating between

- 28 -

euphoria and disillusionment, between hegemony and neglect,
it is high time for the United States and Latin America to
enter a new, mature political relationship.

The United States does not seek precise reciprocity.
We recognize our special obligations as the richest and most
powerful nation in the hemisphere. But experience teaches
that international problems cannot be resolved by any one
country acting alone. The nations of the Americas need
cooperation more than generosity, trade more than aid.
Together we must harness both public and private resources
and give management, technology and imagination as high a
priority as the flow of capital.

- 29 -

With a new attitude, the nations of the Western Hemisphere
can dedicate themselves to an agenda for the future. In the
coming months, the United States will develop such an agenda
and present it to its partners in various forms including the
meeting of the OAS in May.

Today I shall confine myself to two areas: hemispheric
development and food.

## Hemispheric Development

Over the past decade, Latin America's overall growth
rate has exceeded the economic targets of the Alliance for
Progress. Latin America has also made greater progress
than any other developing area toward economic integration.

The Central American Common Market, the Caribbean
Common Market, the Andean Pact, and the Latin American
Free Trade Association have begun to translate abstract
hopes into realities. Nevertheless, Latin America's

- 30 -

relative share of global trade has fallen. And economic
progress has been unevenly distributed, both within and among
countries.

Some Latin American countries have only begun the
process of development. As with poor countries everywhere,
they require large amounts of concessional assistance in the
form of grants and long-term loans with subsidized interest
rates. The United States will continue to contribute its share
of concessional assistance.

The Administration will soon ask Congress to replenish
the U.S. contribution to the Inter-American Development
Bank, both concessional funds and ordinary capital. Assuming
other nations in the hemisphere are willing to do their share,
we will request a fresh United States contribution as large as
our pledge for the last replenishment, $1.8 billion. Coupled

- 31 -

with the contribution of $755 million of twelve new members --
the European countries, Japan and Israel -- and a $500 million
trust fund established by Venezuela a major impetus will be
given to Western Hemisphere development.

But concessional assistance is not available to a new
and growing group of Latin American countries that have
reached an intermediate stage of development. They have a
diversified industrial sector, a significant consumer class,
and an increasing capacity to compete in world markets. Their
need for foreign exchange is growing.

Most important, they need access to the markets of
the developed countries, for exports are the chief source of
their external funds. In this effort, the Trade Act and the
multilateral trade negotiations in Geneva are of great significance.

- 32 -

But these countries also need access to foreign capital markets. While the U.S. long-term bond capital market is the world's largest, only a few of the developing countries have been able to borrow successfully in it.

To ease this problem, we will soon propose to the Congress a new program to help these countries gain independent access to U.S. long-term capital. We will seek authority to extend guarantees to the bonds of these "intermediate" countries up to a global total of $500 million. This is neither an aid program nor a recycling device; it is a stimulus to the countries that have achieved a higher level of income and credit standing to complete the journey toward complete self-reliance. Although this capital market program would not be restricted to one region, it will be of most benefit

-33-

to Latin America. All Latin American countries, regardless
of their stage of development, are vulnerable to sharp swings
in the prices of their exports of raw materials.

In the past, the attitude of the United States toward
international attempts to deal with commodity prices has
been ambiguous and hesistant. Latin America has misread
this as opposition to their efforts to assure stable and fair
prices for their products on the world market.

The recent energy crisis and the new consciousness
of interdependence have clarified our views. We shall
strongly support a world trading system which will meet the
needs of consumers for plentiful commodities at reasonable
prices and the needs of producers for stable income.

- 34 -

Hemisphere to consider together how these commodity issues
should be resolved. We propose that our Economic and
Finance Ministers use the next meeting of the Inter-American
Economic and Social Council to seek ways to provide reciprocal
access to supplies and markets at reasonable and stable
prices.

- 35 -

Food

Latin America rivals the United States as a potential
food surplus region. Yet over the past 15 years, Latin American
agricultural production has barely kept pace with population.

Most Latin American countries are net food importers. The
United States is convinced that with a concerted new effort,
agricultural production can exceed population growth; adequate
nutrition for all can be achieved in this century; and Latin
America can become a major food exporter.

The United States has initiated a world-wide effort to solve
the food crisis. I announced this program at the World Food
Conference in Rome last November. Let me discuss its signi-
ficance for Latin America.

- 36 -

**Production.** The U.S. proposes the establishment, under the Inter-American Development Bank, of a Hemisphere Agricultural Consultative Group. Its goal would be to generate annual production increases in the range of 3-1/2 to 4 percent, to be achieved through:

- integration of agricultural research efforts through-
  out the Hemisphere;

- adoption of improved national food and nutrition
  programs;

- use of development assistance funds to develop
  and improve regional and national agricultural
  programs.

The group should also recommend urgent steps aimed
at reducing the waste and spoilage now estimated at between
20 and 40 percent of total food output in Latin America.

**Research.** Agricultural research is a central element in attaining adequate nutrition for all. But too often research in one locale is unrelated to needs and efforts elsewhere. The U.S. has made progress on this problem through the Smithsonian Institute's computerized agricultural information exchange center. We propose that a comparable center be established for Latin America under the auspices of the Hemisphere Consultative Group and linked to the Smithsonian, to assure the access of all to the benefits of current research. The United States is prepared to join with other countries and institutions in financing the center's costs, and providing it with the technology and know-how which it needs.

**Training.** Latin America needs a new generation of trained professionals to research, teach, design the policies, and administer agricultural programs. The numbers of Latin

- 38 -

American agriculturalists has increased impressively during
the past three decades, but more must be done. To this end,
the United States proposes a jointly-funded program to help
finance research in agricultural and related disciplines in
institutions in both Latin America and the United States.

## The Human Dimension

The discovery of America rekindled a belief in man-
kind's perfectibility. Our struggles for independence were
among the first modern assertions of the fundamental rights
of man. No part of the globe has shown a more passionate
commitment to democratic principles. We have supported, and
continue to support, the work of the Inter-American Human
Rights Commission to secure full implementation of the Inter-
American and Universal Declarations of Human Rights.

- 39 -

for both liberty and progress. Drawing on this resource, can
we fashion now a common vision of the future? What will life
in the Americas be like in the next century? The scientists,
scholars and professionals of our countries should now be
exchanging ideas on the implications of current trends in
education, health and social change. Let the OAS stimulate
and mobilize the best minds and institutions of the hemisphere
in new programs of intellectual exchange.

## Conclusion: Our Mutual Commitment

"Our common impulse... is to fulfill the promise of
America as a continent which beckoned men to fulfill what
was best in them.

- 40 -

On this basis, the United States continues to stand ready to conduct a genuine dialogue with its neighbors in any manner: multilaterally and bilaterally, in the OAS and outside the OAS, with subregional groups or individual states.

Victor Hugo once wrote, in praise of enlightened South American policies, "The main highway lies open. May America travel it, and the world will follow."