Excellency: I fully agree with Your Excellency’s view, as expressed in your message which was delivered by Ambassador Peixoto on December 8, 1958, that it would be of the highest convenience if the termination of the current meeting of the Special Committee could coincide with a reiteration by the United States Government of its support for the principles of "Operation Pan America".1 I have therefore instructed the United States Delegate to deliver, at the closing meeting of the Committee, the following message from me:2
"I extend my congratulations to the ‘Special Committee to Study the Formulation of New Measures for Economic Cooperation’ for its perseverance and diligence in carrying out the tasks assigned to it last September by the Foreign Ministers of the American Republics.
My personal interest in what has come to be known as ‘Operation Pan America’ began when President Kubitschek of Brazil wrote to me on May 28 of this year.3 The Secretary of State thereafter formally expressed the willingness of my Government to cooperate in finding ways of making inter-American economic cooperation more effective. This remains the policy of the United States Government, and I assure you that the United States will lend its warmhearted cooperation to ‘Operation Pan America’.
I am informed that the Special Committee has now completed its general review of the problem of underdeveloped countries and has decided to constitute a working group which, during the time the Special Committee is in recess, will address itself to specific concrete measures that can be taken to promote, by cooperative effort, a greater degree of economic development. I am confident that this work will go forward in the same spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation that has always characterized inter-American relations and that meaningful and constructive measures will be devised to achieve our common objective.
The economic development of Latin America is of vital importance to the strength and well-being of the whole of the free world. I hope that the working group will make rapid progress so that the Special Committee may soon resume its meeting here in Washington. As Americans I am sure that we all share a confidence in the future of this hemisphere and that we are determined to press forward with the concrete measures necessary to make inter-American cooperation in the economic field as fruitful as it has been in the political field."
I am confident that this message will serve to re-emphasize to the public the continuing support of the United States Government for the economic development of the Americas, which Your Excellency has so dramatically called to the hemisphere’s attention through ‘Operation Pan America’.4
I renew to Your Excellency the assurances of my personal esteem and highest consideration.
