Dialogue of Equals

Henry Kissinger starts off this week on another Mission: Impossible. Meeting in Mexico City with Foreign Ministers from 25 other hemisphere countries, the U.S. Secretary of State will try to improve the sour feelings that have resulted from the Nixon Administration's near-total neglect of inter-American problems. Indeed, if the conference succeeds, it will be for one reason only: nobody expects very much from it.

Perhaps in recognition of that unhappy fact, Washington has been talking about the Mexico City meeting in rather guarded terms. Notably missing has been any grand verbal sweep of the Yankee sombrero--the rhetorical overkill that, for instance, heralded the southern tour of Kissinger's predecessor William Rogers as the most important visit by any American Secretary of State in more than 40 years. Such hyperbole --which said "everything without doing anything," in the words of one Latin diplomat--has turned many Latin Americans into skeptics about U.S. intentions.

Kissinger described the goal of his trip quite modestly. Its purpose, he said last week, was to "create the mood and atmospherics so that Latin America again can become a vital part of the foreign policy of the U.S."

The shift in Washington's attitude began last October. Speaking to the Latin Foreign Ministers and ambassadors in Manhattan, Kissinger called for "a new dialogue" between the U.S. and the other countries of the hemisphere.

American policy, he acknowledged, had been "characterized by alternating periods of what some of you have considered intervention with periods of neglect. We are proposing to you a friendship based on equality and on respect for mutual dignity." With U.S. encouragement, the Latin Americans met in Bogota last November to work out an agenda for Mexico City.

At the same time, Kissinger took his own crash course in Latin America. He also dispatched to Latin posts perhaps the ablest team of diplomats the U.S. has sent south of the border for years.

Jack Kubisch, an expert on Brazil who worked with Kissinger in Paris during the Viet Nam truce negotiations, was named Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. John Crimmins, a former Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, was posted to Brazil; John Jova, a former Ambassador to the Organization of American States, was assigned to Mexico. Earlier this month, Kissinger flew to Panama to initial an agreement that promised to remove one of the most emotionally charged irritants in hemisphere relations--continued U.S. control of the Panama Canal.

The Panamanians, the agreement promised, would have the canal--at some as yet unspecified time.

The fact that Kissinger, involved as he was in Middle East negotiations and questions about detente, decided to go to Mexico City, has already impressed many Latin leaders. They know where power lies, and that Kissinger, unlike Rogers, has it. They snubbed Rogers, but they will not do the same to Kissinger. "The Mexico City meeting would be the same as the others if it weren't for Kissinger," says one Latin diplomat.

"He has a personal obligation to succeed; so he will." Adds Costa Rica's President Jose Figueres: "I've come to place my hope in great men, and Kissinger is one of them."

It may well take a great man to solve some of the problems that the ministers must consider. High on the list will be what to do about Cuba. Partly on his own and partly at the urging of the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro has obliquely hinted that he would like to resume friendly relations with the rest of the hemisphere. Seven Latin American countries already have diplomatic relations with Castro. The U.S. economic embargo against Cuba becomes a little less effective each year as other Latins, eager to increase their exports, send catalogues of their goods to Havana.

For purely cold-blooded reasons, Washington is unwilling to cozy up to Castro at this point. For one thing, it wants his somewhat tarnished charisma to lose a little more of its luster before he is welcomed back into the family of hemisphere states. For another, it is quite content to see Moscow go on spending $1.5 million a day to prop up Castro's economically troubled regime.

Recognition of Cuba, the State Department reckons, is a pawn it may sometime want to use in the larger game with the U.S.S.R. Kissinger will find out this week whether other hemisphere nations are prepared to go on playing Washington's waiting game with Cuba.

Painful Memory. A high place on the Mexico City agenda will also go to trade and aid. U.S. trade with Latin America has grown from $7.1 billion ten years ago to $17.4 billion today, and three Latin countries--Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela--are among the U.S.'s twelve biggest trading partners. The Latins will argue that since about half of Washington's estimated $1.9 billion trade surplus in 1973 came from their countries, the U.S. should import more goods from them. They will also voice some predictable complaints about interference in their countries' internal affairs by U.S. companies. ITT'S well-documented meddling in Chilean politics is a green and painful memory throughout the hemisphere. Even if Kissinger accepted all of the Latin arguments, however, he would still have to persuade a sometimes reluctant Congress to modify trade and tariff pacts.

The most hopeful element in U.S.Latin relations may result from the Arab oil embargo. "The energy shortage puts our relations with Latin American countries on a somewhat more equal basis," says one key American ambassador.

"They may need us, but we need them too." Latin America's vast undeveloped natural resources have given it new importance to all industrialized countries.

Says the host of the conference, Mexico's Foreign Minister Emilio Rabasa, "We will have a dialogue as equals, forgetting the past and thinking of the future." Intangible as it is, a change in mood may be just enough to make the conference a hit.

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