Center For Security Policy Challenges Emergence Of Preferential Treatment Of Soviet Bloc Over Latin American Nations

The Center for Security Policy today issued a critical appraisal of the priorities of the Group of Seven industrialized countries in placing the economic and financial needs of the Warsaw Pact countries increasingly ahead of those of the Latin American debtor nations in certain areas. "We are finding a greater willingness by the industrialized nations to accommodate the financial requirements of our adversaries than to assist with the critical financial needs of democracies in Latin America," says Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., director of the Center for Security Policy.

In letters delivered to the finance ministers of the Group of Seven countries, the principal Latin American debtor nations, the IMF and the World Bank, the Center calls attention to the growing inequities in the industrialized West’s approach to funding Mr. Gorbachev’s perestroika and the financial requirements of the flegling democratic governments of Latin America.

Highlighting disturbing differences in treatment, the Center references a number of points, including: "Whereas Latin American nations are required to justify the uses of new borrowings rather rigorously, the majority of loans to Soviet bloc countries are untied, general purpose credits with few (if any) questions asked by banks concerning where the funds are going or how they are being used." Over ten other examples of dissonant treatment between the Latin American nations and the Warsaw Pact are cited.

In an accompanying White Paper on Economic and Financial Security: Gorbachev’s Perestroika and How the West Should Respond, the Center offers a blueprint for judging perestroika and makes recommendations for a coordinated alliance policy. One of those recommendations includes a "leveling of the economic and financial playing field between the Warsaw Pact countries and Latin American debtor nations."