Strong Efforts To Extend Manila Alliance

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27583, 14 February 1955, Page 11

Strong Efforts To Extend Manila Alliance

(Rec. 10 p.m.) WASHINGTON, Feb. 12.

The Manila Pact powers had initiated strong diplomatic efforts to persuade Ceylon, Burma, Indonesia and India to reconsider the proposition of membership in the defence alliance for South-east Asia, a highly-placed official told a Reuter correspondent today. Extension of treaty membership to these nations was understood to be one. of the major objectives of the eight Foreign Ministers, due to hold their first Manila Pact business session in Bangkok, Siam, later this month. The present Asian members of the treaty are Siam, Pakistan, and the Philippines. Other members are the United States, Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand. The correspondent said that, according to an informed source, Mr Richard Casey, Australia’s Minister for External Affairs, already was in the process of explaining to Asian leaders “just what the Manila Pact does do and what it does not do.” The informant said that th® pros-

pects of increasing the membership were considered good. The Indo-China states of Laos and Cambodia also were considered qualified for membership. But nonCommunist Vietnam, through the legal terms of the Geneva settlement, seemed to be precluded at this time. One United States official said work on extending the treaty membership was being lent urgency because of an anticipated increase in Communist political activity in Asia. This official said that experts, who had been carefully studying for the last three days the dramatic change in leadership in Moscow, were now predicting that the Communist bloc would match its manoeuvring to keep Germany out of the Western union with a twin diplomatic drive in Asia to loosen the ties of Japan and other Asian nations with the non-Commun-ist world.

Statements by Soviet leaders since the former Prime Minister, Mr Georgi Malenkov, fell from power seemed, according to these experts, to indicate that the Communists would place equal emphasis on their European and Asian policies.

The chances of India aligning itself with the non-Communist world were thought to be slight, according to private Washington estimates. But at least two other Asian nations which had declined invitations to join the Manila Pact when it was signed on September 8, last year, were now reported to be seriously reconsidering their position. They had become reassured concerning the peaceful intentions of the pact. Pakistan, it was pointed out, had signed the pact with the proviso that it might withdraw after examining the situation in the light of future events. Today Pakistan’s continued association with the pact was assured, it was learned authoritatively.