Figueres Backs Appeal for Latin Economic Union

Jase figures, former president of Costa Rica and visiting professor of Government, yesterday appliauded Brazilian president Joao Goulart's appeal for unification of Latin. American countries in defense of their common trade interests.

Figueres said he felt that Goulart's statement in Sao Paulo Monday, which seemed in Sao Paul Monday, which seemed to exclude the United States from the proposed economic alliance, might be the prelude to some "long overdue revisions of the whole economic relationship between industrial and non industrial nations."

"Up to the present day, that relationship has been strongly favoring the industrial powers, largely because of a lack of unity among the less-developed nations," Figueres said.

He added that he agreed wholeheartedly with Goulart's statement that the present trade system under the Alliance for Progress "represents a continual bleed on our [Latin American] economies."

"The foreign financing under the Alliance for Progress is less than what Latin America's unindustrialized countries have been losing by the drop of export prices," Figueres said. "The original charter of the Alliance admits the need for revision of trade relations, but very little has yet been accomplished."

A possible solution to the problem would be a preferential treatment for exprots and imports of the less-developed countries, Figueres said.