Sanford Urges Liberal Reform In Economic, Foreign Policy

Terry Sanford, president of Duke University and an all-but-declared candidate for the U.S. presidency, came to Harvard last night to explain his program for liberal reform for America and to search for supporters.

Sanford told a less-than-enthusiastic group of about 50 at the Science Center that if elected he would work to organize a national economic council to oversee the fine tuning of the economy, to guarantee full employment and to reassert America's lost role of "moral leadership" in world affairs.

Covers Ec Issues

The hour-long talk--organized by Citizens for Participation in Political Action, liberal democrats instrumental in bringing about the 1972 McGovern victory in Massachusetts--centered on the economy and foreign policy.

Criticizing the "cumbersome" nature of current fiscal and monetary policies at the federal level, Sanford said the president needs to endorse the goal of "full employment" explicitly and to embrace more sophisticated planning and speedier implementation of anti-recession policies.

Responding later to questions from the crowd, Sanford explained that he still believes in the "efficiency" of the free enterprise system, but said the government must eliminate its "abusive" elements.

To assure that "everyone who wants a job can find some kind of job" within the private economy, he said, the federal government must be prepared to implement controls on wages, prices, profits and interest rates.

Shifting to foreign policy questions, Sanford said he sees the United States at a turning point and said he hopes the country "will not turn inward and leave the world to itself" because it has "so much to offer."

Sanford said the U.S. must now lead by example and not by military or economic discipline to "remind the world of the values of our own revolution."

Sanford was Governor of South Carolina from 1960 to 1965 and has been influential in the Democratic Party. He is now one of about a dese Democratic who say they want to be president.