Conference Climate

Landing at Caracas' Maiquetia Airport this week for the Tenth Inter-American Conference, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told a welcoming crowd of officials and newsmen: "I know that the climate here, not only physically but also in terms of our conference atmosphere, will be much more temperate than that of Berlin. We have our problems . . . but we discuss them as friends."

Stop the Reds. The chief problem that Dulles wanted to discuss with Latin American friends at Caracas was Communist infiltration in the hemisphere, notably in Guatemala. To the U.S., the ever-growing influence of Communists in a republic midway between the U.S. and the Panama Canal is intolerable. Since it is pledged to the principle of nonintervention in individual countries' affairs, the U.S. can deal with this threat to American security only by joint action with the other republics. At Caracas, Dulles is expected to press for a full-dress debate on a U.S. resolution condemning Red penetration anywhere in the continent; the resolution will probably not name Guatemala, but the country's Communist trends will no doubt be well aired in the debate. Then the U.S. may seek pledges for effective action against Communist travel between countries, propaganda in hemisphere mails, influence in labor unions and traffic in contraband arms.

That is a large order, because few Latin American diplomats see the dangers of world Communism. Their inclination is to shrug off Communism as a local problem, and some even sympathize privately with Guatemalan Foreign Minister Guillermo Toriello's charge that the U.S. is being outrageously interventionist.

Help the Neighbors. The Latin Americans are far more excited about economic issues -i.e., what they can get out of the U.S. They want assurances that the U.S. will grant more loans and technical aid. quit complaining about high coffee prices, promise to hold down tariffs, give them some sort of parity price program for their raw materials. Some U.S gesture -an announcement, for instance, that the U.S. Export-Import Bank would reconsider the decision against making further Latin American development loans -may be necessary in this atmosphere if Dulles is to win support for his anti-Communist program.

Though the conference will probably go on for at least a month, Dulles will have to work fast; he plans to stay only a week or ten days. This week the conference got slowly under way at Caracas' spanking new University City with a welcoming speech by Venezuela's President Marcos Perez Jimenez. Topic A the first day was not conference business at all but the Puerto Rican Nationalists' attack on U.S. Congressmen in Washington (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS).

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