ABANDONMENT OF EQUIPMENT

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27410, 24 July 1954, Page 7

ABANDONMENT OF EQUIPMENT

U.S. Materials In Indo-China

(Rec. 10 p.m.) WASHINGTON, July 22. Mr Harold Stassen, the Foreign Operations Administrator, announced today that the United States would abandon a certain amount of nonmilitary equipment in the Communistoccupied area of Jndo-China. Mr Stassen told a press conference that the equipment consisted mainly of pumps and irrigation machinery, one fully-equipped " hospital, and possibly some ambulances. He said: “We have decided to leave behind equipment of a purely humanitarian and civilian nature. We will not dismantle or destroy those things which the people can use. “We have sought no compensation from the Vietminh. We took those things in for the good of, the people of Indo-China and they will be left for their benefit,” he said. Mr Stassen said that the basic policy still was to move everything of military value out of the areas ceded to the Vietminh, It was estimated that some 190,000 tons of United States military equipment was in the Red River Delta area.

The United States would continue technical aid and assistance to the remainder of Vietnam, and the other two States of Indo-China, Laos and Cambodia.

Mr Stassen said his organisation already had a small group at work assisting in the evacuation 1 of an estimated 100,000 displaced persons from nonthern areas of Indo-China.

American military equipment on the high seas on its way to the battle areas would be diverted to Saigon in the south, he said.