"Something Positive"

After two years of exchanging glares and stares instead of goods, the U.S. and Argentina finally came to a working agreement last week. For both countries the new understanding meant a major change in policy. Said Secretary of State Dean Acheson at his press conference: it is "entirely natural" for the U.S. to be considering a loan to Argentina.

Before the new understanding, the U.S. had steadfastly refrained from offering help to the tottering Argentine economy, in the pious hope that the need for assistance might persuade Peron to restore full civil liberties and stop acting like a cut-rate dictator. For better or worse, the new U.S. policy would be to help Argentina get up on her feet first, and worry about internal reforms afterward.

Architect of the new policy is Assistant Secretary of State Edward G. Miller Jr., who conferred with Peron in Buenos Aires in February (TIME, March 6). "We hope that once Argentina is on her feet, civil liberties, as we think of them, will be restored," said Miller. "Meanwhile ... we've got to do something positive . . . We're going ahead with it."

Miller's "something positive" would probably involve the underwriting by groups of U.S. banks of Argentina's piled-up commercial dollar debts (about $100 million), plus the grant of credits to American farm-machinery manufacturers to finance badly needed exports to Argentina. Selling the new policy to bankers and the

Department of State was made easier by the work of brisk, friendly Argentine Treasury Minister Ramon Cereijo, who came to Washington a month ago for the purpose.

Cereijo assured U.S. businessmen that Argentina would welcome private U.S. capital and would treat it fairly. To demonstrate its change of heart from the old yanqui-baiting days, his government had already taken steps to:

P: Allow Pan American Airways and Panagra to transfer a backlog of profits earned before October's devaluation of the peso into dollars at pre-devaluation rates.

P: Grant U.S. oil companies dollar exchange for enough crude oil to keep their Argentine refineries going.

P: Allow Braniff International Airways to fly into Buenos Aires.

P: Allow new U.S. movies to come into the country again.

Argentina's willingness to give quid pro quo was the decisive factor in convincing the State Department that Miller's, new policy could work.

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