THE AMERICAS: Top-Level Attention

One hurry-up half hour after he greeted brother Dwight at Washington National Airport last week, returning Fact-Finder Milton Eisenhower gave out the “urgent” gist of the recommendations he will make as a result of his Central American swing. The U.S., he said, should consider:

¶ “The imperative need for loans—not grants—in every country visited.”*

¶ A response “to the appeal of Latin American nations for more stable relationships between raw-commodity prices and the prices of manufactured products.”

¶”The urgent and immediate need to bring about throughout the hemisphere a clear, accurate understanding of U.S. policies, purposes, programs and capabilities.”

Milton had hardly returned before Secretary of State John Foster Dulles flew to Rio de Janeiro for a two-day visit in Brazil this week. Topic A with Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek will be the high-level meeting of American nations Kubitschek suggested after U.S. Vice President Nixon was stoned and spat on in Lima and Caracas last May. At first Kubitschek suggested a hemispheric summit conference, but after Dulles rejected the notion of a ”meeting on a get-together basis of heads of government,” the Brazilian President agreed that no more time should be wasted in talking about the conference’s level—the important thing was “to make contact with the problem.” Now likely: a well-prepared conference of foreign ministers.

* Panama, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala.