Office of the Historian

263. Memorandum of Conversation1 2

Mexico City, December 1, 1976

PARTICIPANTS:

  • U.S. Side
  • The Secretary
  • Mr. William Rogers, Under Secretary for Economic Affairs
  • Colombia Side
  • Foreign Minister Indalecio Lievano Aguirre

The Secretary met over lunch with Foreign Minister Lievano. Lievano stressed human rights and touched on Panama and economic relations as well.

Human Rights: This issue was at the top of Lievano’s agenda. His suggestion was blunt: do not hang U.S. policy in the hemisphere around the human rights issue. To make human rights performance the test of our relationship with the nations of the Americas would chill our ties with a goodly number who happen not to share our own democratic preferences just now, would create no end of difficulties for the few other democracies, and would probably not do much for human rights.

[Omitted here is material unrelated to human rights policy.]

  1. Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, P820118–1945. Secret; Sensitive; Nodis.↩
  2. Colombian Foreign Minister Lievano presented his views to Kissinger and Rogers concerning incorporating human rights issues into U.S.–Latin American relations.↩