The U.S. Answer

Cuba's Prime Minister Fidel Castro dazzled the Organization of American States' Committee of 21 meeting in Buenos Aires fortnight ago with an off-the-beard proposal that the U.S. give Latin America $30 billion in aid over a ten-year period. Then he hopped a plane for Montevideo. The Cubans he left behind him had no sound facts to use in making a case for the ill-considered proposal, but last week they introduced a resolution calling for a study of it.

As the U.S. delegation, headed by Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Thomas Mann, labored over its rebuttal, representatives of other nations one by one warned the Cubans that they planned to vote against the resolution. By the time the committee met to debate, the Cubans had decided to withdraw it. Quietly, Mann folded up the U.S. rebuttal statement of the U.S. position, put it away unread.

Its eloquent thesis was none the less valid. Free-world public development funds, it said, should soon be increased by about $18.5 billion -- including $1 billion in the Committee of 21-sponsored Inter-American Development Bank. It went on to note that the U.S. knows of no economically sound development plan rejected for lack of funds. "The people of the U.S. yield to no people in genuinely, sincerely and warmheartedly seeking to make all of America free and strong and prosperous," said the statement. "All they ask in return is that their puolic funds be used so that all of the people--not just a few--will benefit."

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