Inter-American Security

Report Outline
Reorganization of Inter-American System
Inter-American System During the War
Obstacles to Inter-American Cooperation
Inter-American and World Organization

Reorganization of Inter-American System

Coming Conferences at Rio de Janeiro and Bogota

Plans for strengthening the inter-American regional system to make it a more effective agency for maintaining peace and fostering international cooperation in the Western Hemisphere are now being formulated for submission to two conferences of the 21 republics. A special Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Continental Peace and Security, to be convened at Rio de Janeiro probably late in 1946, will have the task of framing a permanent military assistance pact to replace the temporary wartime Act of Chapultepec, signed at Mexico City on Mar. 6, 1945. A full-dress Pan American conference, to be held at Bogota, Colombia, sometime in 1947, will take up proposals for reorganizing the administrative machinery of the inter-American system.

The Rio conference has been twice postponed because of the political situation in Argentina. Originally to be convened Oct. 20, 1945, the meeting was put off to an undetermined date in the spring of 1946, after Under Secretary of State Acheson had declared, Oct. 3, that “the United States government does not feel that it can properly negotiate or sign with the present Argentine regime a treaty of military assistance.” Then on Mar. 6, 1946, the Governing Board of the Pan American Union, at the instance of Uruguay, again recommended postponement, without fixing a new date.

Meanwhile, at the end of February, Col. Peron had been constitutionally elected President of Argentina. On Apr. 8, 1946, the United States State Department sent a memorandum to the other American republics urging that a mutual assistance pact be concluded “at the earliest possible date.” The State Department suggested that the Rio conference be called “after the new government of Argentina has been installed and has had a reasonable time to comply with the promises made at Mexico City.”