SUPPORT FOR VIET NAM

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25080, 11 January 1947, Page 7

SUPPORT FOR VIET NAM

PLANS OF BURMESE LEADER FORMER COLLABORATOR WITH JAPANESE (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, January 9. Dr. Ba Maw, a former Prime Minister of Burma and head of the Japanese sponsored “Free Burma” Government, announced that he is raising volunteers to go to Indo-China to support the Viet Nam forces, says Reuter’s Rangoon correspondent. The contingent’s commander will be the 26-year-old Colonel Bo Yan Naing, who commanded the Burmese forces under the Japanese. He told Reuters that he had proposed to Mr Sarat Chandra Bose of the Bengal Congress Party that there should be a combined Indian and Burmese volunteer force to assist the Viet Nam forces.

The Calcutta correspondent of the Exchange Telegraph Agency says that Mr Sarat Chandra Bose announced that the Bengal Congress was sponsoring formation of an Indian corps to fight the French.

A French News Agency dispatch from Hanoi suggests that French authorities expect negotiations with a section of the Viet Nam leaders, reports Reuter’s Paris correspondent. The correspondent says there is now a tendency on the part of the Viet Nam leaders to return to political activity. If such a movement occurs, it will possibly approach and negotiate with the Catholic Party. The correspondent says that the phrase, “return to political activity,” is thought in Paris to embrace three possible moves: first, the organisation of the overthrow of the Viet Nam Government; second, the division of power among different groups; and, third, the restoration of a monarch in order to create an atmosphere of appeasement.