Plague-Control Plan

Faced with the growing threat of Communist power in Guatemala, the hemisphere's 20 other nations agreed last week that a consultative meeting of the Organization of American States is now essential.

The most notable convert to the idea of holding such a meeting was Mexico, whose complacent view of Guatemala as a little country going through a period of revolutionary reform was abruptly upset last month when her southern neighbor received 2,000 tons of Communist arms and ammunition. A formal call for the conference, to meet around July 1, probably in Montevideo, is expected this week.

The U.S. will offer the conference a concrete plan for resisting the extension of Red influence in or from Guatemala.

Main points: 1) interception and confiscation of any further arms shipments from Communist sources to Guatemala;--2) a five-nation watchdog commission to enforce the arms quarantine and to keep an eye on Guatemalan infiltration among its neighbors; and 3) no action for the present on economic sanctions that might bring hardship to Guatemala's people.

If the U.S. can get the needed two-thirds (14) vote for this program, Guatemala's stubborn President Jacobo Arbenz will have to make a serious decision: either to control his rampant Red comrades or take the risk of some future--and perhaps far heavier--demonstration of his neighbors' disapproval.

-- On its own, the U.S. has already sent destroyers to scour the seas off Guatemala, shadowing and photographing ships and challenging them for identification. Only vessel so far stopped (by a comic misunderstanding) was the United Fruit Co.'s banana-freighter Choluteca.

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