Kennedy's Policy

Out of Washington last week emerged the pattern of the Kennedy Administration's approach to Latin American policy. Back to his old hemisphere bailiwick with the broadest grant of powers to handle Latin American affairs ever given any U.S. official went Adolf A. Berle, 66, Assistant Secretary of State from 1938 to 1944.

Berle, said President Kennedy, will head an interdepartmental task force to coordinate "all policies and programs of concern to the Americas." The Kennedy move was an organizational double play. On tackling the administrative aspect of its Latin American headache, the new Administration saw two main problems. One was to replace the overlapping, often contradictory activities of scores of departments and agencies with a single, cohesive U.S. policy. The other was to find a way to get Berle to re-enlist in the State Department. Despite all en treaties, Berle refused his old post as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, a job aptly described by a previous incumbent as "tremendous responsibility without authority." The co ordinator idea solved both problems. Standing outside the usual State Department hierarchy, Berle will have only two bosses -- Secretary of State Dean Rusk and the President himself.

The choice of Berle gives a good indication of how the new Administration in tends to act in Latin America. A onetime F.D.R. brain-truster who practices corporation law on Wall Street, Berle is a tenacious political liberal, has frequently deplored past U.S. hostility to social revolution in the hemisphere. The U.S., says Berle, should "make long-range plans with governments that have held free, honest and open elections, and deal with others only on a de facto, day-to-day basis." The clearest expression of Coordinator Berle's view's and those of the new Ad ministration were laid down in a secret report, prepared for Kennedy before his inauguration by six experts under Berle's chairmanship. The group recommended that the U.S. support social reform and even revolution where justified, but not compromise on Communist invasion of the hemisphere. Other recommendations:

P: End Export-Import Bank yardsticks for all Latin American loans, i.e., that they must be bankable, and more loans and grants for social purposes.

P: Show greater flexibility in dealing with nations that do not agree fully with the free-enterprise concept.

P: Lower trade barriers and increase U.S. markets for Latin American products.

P: Encourage Latin American governments to cut armaments expenditures.

In one area, relief, the Kennedy Administration has taken action. Last week the President announced a food-for-peace mission to be sent to Latin America, also dispatched Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Abraham Ribicoff to Miami for a four-day, on-the-spot survey of 32,000 Cuban refugees. The day after Ribicoff returned to Washington with his recommendations, Kennedy announced a $4,000,000, nine-point program of refugee aid. Among the ideas: training in U.S. methods for displaced physicians, teachers and other professionals; a program of care for unaccompanied children; subsidies to provide for the education of all children; a resettlement program to move refugees out of the congested Miami area.

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