Whirling Through the Third World

Carter scores a few points on his trip abroad

As Jimmy Carter set out aboard Air Force One for Caracas last week, aides passed out a two-page memo to the 170 reporters who accompanied him aboard two chartered planes. Entitled "Health Advisory for Presidential Trip," the document warned them about dread diseases, from dysentery to yellow fever, that they might encounter on the seven-day, 15,000-mile journey to four countries. The statement also cautioned them about "treacherous, steep drop-offs" on the road between Caracas and the airport, the undertow off Rio de Janeiro's beaches, bad drinking water in Nigeria and poisonous mamba snakes in Liberia.

The catalogue of horrors provided a bit of drama for what was surely one of the least exciting presidential trips abroad in memory. In fact, according to senior aides, Carter would have preferred to stay home but for his promise last year to visit South America and Africa. Said an assistant: "The word we got from Brazil was that they would feel insulted if we canceled the trip."

Nonetheless, when Carter, Wife Rosalynn and Daughter Amy head back to Washington early this week, the presidential party can point to some modest returns from the journey. It gave the President an opportunity to restate his concern about human rights overseas, dramatize his interest in developing nations and bask in the warm cheers of friendly foreign crowds.

At Caracas, Carter delighted an audience of several hundred at the airport with a short speech in halting Spanish. Venezuelans said his accent was terrible, but his grammar ,was good and his meaning was clear. "Viva Venezuela," he declared in winding up his remarks.

For the most part, Carter and his host, President Carlos Andres Perez, smoothed over their differences. But at the airport, and during private talks at the presidential residence, surrounded by orchids, roses and tamarind trees, Perez made a pitch for speedy Senate passage of the Panama Canal treaty. He warned that "each word pronounced" in the rancorous debate in the U.S. over the treaty "will have a very deep impact on Latin America." During dinner that night, Perez, who heads one of South America's two democracies (the other: Colombia), praised Carter's support of nuclear nonproliferation and human rights. But he also pressed for U.S. actions to match Carter's words.

Perez is especially worried about the regime of Nicaraguan Strongman Anastasio Somoza Debayle, who is using torture to combat leftist guerrillas. Perez has proposed an economic boycott against Somoza. According to a U.S. official, Carter told Perez the U.S. is "not going to take actions that are going to get us in a position of bringing about the downfall of a leader of a country." But Carter did call for an investigation of the situation in Nicaragua by the United Nations or the Organization of American States.

Next day, in a speech to the Venezuelan congress, Carter reaffirmed his belief that developing countries should have a bigger role in the making of international economic policies. He pledged increased U.S. contributions (now $1.9 billion a year) to international development agencies like the World Bank. But he noted that Venezuela and other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries "have a responsibility to use their surplus wealth to meet the needs of the world's people."

Carter tried to downplay differences on arriving at his next stop, Brasilia, the futuristic capital of Brazil. Its ruling generals angrily canceled military and foreign aid agreements with the U.S. last year after the Administration criticized the country's record on human rights. Also, Brazil resents U.S. opposition to its plans to buy nuclear reactors from West Germany. At the airport, Carter set an up beat tone for his visit by describing Brazil; the world's seventh most populous nation, as a "truly great power." In a cool but polite welcoming statement, Brazilian President Ernesto Geisel hoped that Carter would take away "a fair opinion on the Brazilian reality."

During private talks in the gold-carpeted presidential office in Brasilia's Planalto Palace, both leaders touched only briefly on the issues that divide them. Carter urged Brazilians to consider fueling their nuclear reactors with thorium rather than uranium. Reason: uranium-fueled reactors produce more plutonium that can readily be used in nuclear weapons than thorium-fueled reactors would produce. But Geisel seemed unpersuaded, and Carter did not press the matter. "What would it accomplish?" asked a top White House aide. "Neither side is going to change, so we might as well spend our time discussing things of mutual interest." Thus discussions centered on economic relations and prospects for peace in the Middle East and in southern Africa.

In public, however, Carter strongly reaffirmed his commitment to human rights. Asked by a local newsman to comment on the Brazilian government's insistence that human rights are an internal matter, Carter said at a Brasilia press conference: "We believe this is an interational problem, that the focusing of world attention and world pressure on us and other countries is a very beneficial factor." But he ducked when a Brazilian newsman asked his opinion of Brazil's system of selecting national leaders by party congresses rather than popular elections. Said he: "I'm not here to tell you how to form your government."

Later the members of Brazil's National Congress (which Geisel had closed for two weeks in 1977) applauded Carter after he made another endorsement of human rights. Federal Deputy Erasmo Martins Pedro, leader of the opposition Brazilian Democratic Movement, hailed Carter's views as "a response to the most profound demands of ethical consciousness and not of political conveniences dictated by the international situation."

At the end of the visit, White House Press Secretary Jody Powell told newsmen that Carter and his fellow travelers, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, thought relations between the U.S. and Brazil had been improved. The Carters wound up their stay with a night of relaxation in Rio de Janeiro. As the guests of Rio's mayor, Marcos Tamoyo, they dined and danced aboard a yacht in the harbor to Frank Sinatra records. Later, after Amy had gone to bed, the President and his wife made an unscheduled stop at a nightclub in the Hotel Nacional, where a chorus line and jugglers put on a special performance for them.

Next day Carter boarded Air Force One for the seven-hour flight across the Atlantic to Lagos, where he became the first U.S. President ever to make a state visit to black Africa. Despite the 10 p.m. arrival, his motorcade was greeted by a few thousand clapping Nigerians. After a night's sleep, he talked privately with Nigerian Chief of State Lieut. General Olusegun Obasanjo about oil prices (Nigeria supplies the U.S. annually with some 400 million bbl. of oil). The two leaders also discussed the presence of Cuban troops in Ethiopia and Mozambique, and the situation in Rhodesia, where black guerrillas have threatened increased violence in their bid for power. Carter views Nigeria as a key mediator in that conflict, as well as in the one in Namibia.

Indeed, one of Carter's major themes in Nigeria was his belief that black Africans should be allowed to settle their own problems, without the interference of outsiders who might turn the continent into an East-West battleground. "We know that this continent will enjoy the liberation that can come to those who put racial divisions and injustice behind them," said Carter in a speech at the National Theater in Lagos. Added he: "On that day, blacks and whites alike will be able to say, in the words of a man from my own state, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 'Free at last! Free at last! Great God Almighty, we are free at last.' "

On Monday, Carter was to head for Monrovia, Liberia's capital, for the final stop of his trip. Over lunch, he and Liberian President William Tolbert Jr. planned to talk about the West African economy, U.S. investments in the country and the prospects for increased financial aid from the U.S. Then, at precisely 4:15 p.m., Carter was to begin the long flight across the Atlantic, back to Washington and the pressing domestic problems--led by a surging inflation rate --that he had left behind seven days earlier.

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