West May Now Form Asian Alliance

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27407, 21 July 1954, Page 11

West May Now Form Asian Alliance

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8 p.m.) NEW YORK, July 19. The three Western Powers had agreed to form a Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation to seal off that area from further Communist penetration, it was reported tonight. The report came in an American Associated Press dispatch from •Geneya, which quoted Western diplomatic sources as saying that “barring snags” a cease-fire would be achieved in Indo-China.' A few' hours before the report was received, officials tin Washington said that Britain and the United States had halted their talks in Washington on a South-east Asian defence pact until after the outcome of the Indo-China negotiations at Geneva was known.

The American agency report quoted Western informants .in Geneva as saying Britain, France, and the United States had rejected outright Communist demands that they give up plans for S.E.A.T.O. as part of an Indo-China settlement. They would go ahead with the South-east Asian defence system regardless of whether the Geneva conference achieved an armistice.

But the French Prime Minister (Mr Pierre Mendes-France) and the British Foreign Secretary (Mr Eden) were reported to have bowed to the demands of the Soviet Foreign Minister (Mr Molotov) that the three Indo-Chinese States be left out of S.E.A.T.O.

Officials said this “’neutralisation” of the three States would not prevent S.E.A.T.O. from guaranteeing their frontiers, the American Associated Press. correspondent reported. The talks on Asia began in Washington shortly after President Eisen-

hower and Sir Winston Churchill agreed to “press forward” with’Southeast Asian defence planning. Meetings had been held between Sir Robert Campbell, the Minister at tne British Embassy, and Mr Walter Bedell Smith, the United States Undersecretary of State, who returned to Geneva last Friday to take part in the final of the Indo-China negotiations with the Communists. Talks between the three Anzus Powers—Australia, New Zealand, and the United States—on means of blocking Communist expansion in the area are continuing in Washington, but, while the Geneva negotiations are in progress, they are emphasising the economic, rather than the military aspects, of the proposed South-east Asia Treaty Organisation.