Proclamation 5459

By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation

The peoples of the Western Hemisphere are bound together by a shared belief in peace, prosperity, justice, and freedom.

The Organization of American States is the embodiment of that common commitment to these basic principles through its Charter and the Rio Treaty. As one of the oldest international organizations in existence, the OAS has worked vigorously to broaden peaceful exchanges between the peoples it represents and the world community; to reduce the tensions and conflicts arising within the Hemisphere; and to stoutly resist aggressive threats from outside. The record of the OAS in the peaceful settlement of disputes, the promotion of democratic values, and the protection of human rights has earned worldwide respect and admiration.

The Charter of the OAS clearly expresses the belief of the peoples of the region in the effective exercise of representative democracy. There are currently more democratic states in this Hemisphere than at any other time in history, an eloquent witness to the solid progress in this area.

Recently, the OAS began an effort to revitalize the inter-American system, to enhance its peacekeeping role, to strengthen its dedication to human rights, and to increase its effectiveness in improving living conditions for all who dwell in this Hemisphere.

On this Pan American Day of 1986, the people of the United States extend a warm and friendly greeting to all our neighbors in the Americas. We reaffirm our active support for the Organization of American States and the goal of Hemispheric amity and solidarity. We renew our solemn commitment to those principles to which the members of the OAS wholeheartedly pledged themselves at the December 1985 General Assembly in Cartagena.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Monday, April 14, 1986, as Pan American Day, and the week beginning April 13, 1986, as Pan American Week. I urge the Governors of the fifty States, and the Governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and officials of other areas under the flag of the United States of America to honor these observances with appropriate activities and ceremonies.

In Witness Whereof I have hereunto set my hand this fourteenth day of April, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and tenth.

RONALD REAGAN

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 4[:26 p.m., April 15, 1986]