American Defence Pact With Formosa Reported

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27501, 8 November 1954, Page 11

American Defence Pact With Formosa Reported

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 9 p.m.) . NEW YORK, November 6. A Washington dispatch to the “New York Times” today backed up reports that the United States was arranging a mutual defence pact with Nationalist China. The report said the pact was understood to forbid the Nationalist Chinese to attack the Communist Chinese mainland except in self-defence. The State Department would not discuss the matter, but the arrangement was understood to involve a pledge by the United States similar to those given to §outh Korea and Japan, to aid in Nationalist China’s defence, subject to conditions imposed by the United States Government, the dispatch said.

There was, for example, no thought as far as could be learned in Washington of extending any 'automatic guarantee to involve the United States in any war in which the Nationalist Chinese might engage. The prospective treaty thus followed in general the whole pattern of limited guarantees previously given by Washington elsewhere in the Pacific—to Australia and New Zealand as well as to Japan and Korea.