Proclamation 4644

By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation

Each year the peoples of the Americas celebrate our common origins and continuing mutual ties. To the people of the United States Pan American Day commemorates the importance of mutual respect and cooperation which characterize the Inter-American system and its central institution, the Organization of American States.

No region of the world can boast a greater tradition of peace and tranquility among nations. No nations of the world have worked more consistently or harder to find solutions to the political and economic problems which they face in the world today. Our Organization of American States, the birth of which we will celebrate on April 14, has been and continues to be vital to this continuing effort.

In the past year alone, the Organization of American States has made important contributions to the welfare of the people of the hemisphere. It has helped to promote the cause of human rights and dignity in the Americas and to diffuse tensions in Central and South America.

The United States, on Pan American Day 1979, salutes the other nations of this hemisphere, and pledges its solidarity with them, and with the Organization of American States, in the continuing efforts to achieve the visionary democratic ideals of the founding heroes of our hemisphere. It is from these ideals that we derive our desire and our ability to cooperate for a common good and for the benefit of all our people.

Now, THEREFORE, I, JIMMY CARTER, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Saturday, April 14, 1979 as Pan American Day and the week beginning April 15, 1979 as Pan American Week, and I call upon the Governors of the fifty States, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and appropriate officials of all other areas under the flag of the United States to issue similar Proclamations.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this sixth day of March, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and third.

JIMMY CARTER

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 3:13 p.m., March 6, 1979]