Remarks at the El Dorado Airport Upon Leaving for the United States.

Mr. President:

I want to, on behalf of my wife and myself, express our most sincere thanks to you, and to your wife, for your greeting which you have given us today--and also for the opportunity that you have given to us and to all of our countrymen to see your city and country, and to realize how close are the links which bind Colombia and the United States.

Perhaps the most encouraging event of most recent years in the world of freedom has been the closer links which have been bound together and tied together in Western Europe, and which are now being molded in the same effective way here in this hemisphere.

It is, it seems to me, obligatory upon all those of us who believe in freedom to work together to make freedom, as you have said, Mr. President, not merely an abstraction or a phrase, but to demonstrate that under a system of freedom people can live the kind of dignified, productive life to which they all aspire.

I said this morning at Techo that the great fight of the last decade in this hemisphere was against tyranny and dictatorships. The great fight in the next decade-the decade in which we are now upon--is to prove that freedom and abundance go hand in hand.

I return tonight to the United States, and I do not want to leave without saying to the people of Colombia that my wife and I have received the most heart-warming welcome that we have ever received.

Their words to us this morning, and again at midnight as we left this ancient city, I think will be the greatest source of encouragement to the people of the United States, to realize that we are together in a great enterprise which is worthy of our effort.

So I thank you, Mr. President, and I thank all your countrymen.

And now hasta luego. Thank you.