The World - News from Nov. 18, 1986

Caribbean and Central American leaders meeting in Miami criticized President Reagan’s program aimed at boosting their economies. The three-year-old Caribbean Basin Initiative provides duty-free entry to the United States for scores of goods from 21 Caribbean and Central American countries. However, it has failed to remove duties and quotas on principal Caribbean goods such as textiles, petroleum products and sugar and to stem a decline in the dollar value of the region’s exports, the leaders complained. U.S. officials responded that the region’s governments need to do more to attract foreign investment.