INTERNAL WAR IN VEITNAM

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27614, 22 March 1955, Page 13

INTERNAL WAR IN VEITNAM

Threat By Rebel General SAIGON, March 20. General Macut, youthful leader of the- Hoa Hao Buddhist sect which is defying the South Vietnam Government headed by Mr Ngo Dinh Diem, predicted today that heavy and widespread fighting would break out in South Vietnam by the end of March. Interviewed in his headquarters in the Mewong delta, General Bacut said that Mr Diem planned to launch a big operation against him, and he would fight back. j Reporters reached his hideout by travelling in a boat along a maze of tree-lined waterways between LongXu ven and Sadec. Ke showed reporters the capture:’ battle order of the Vietnamese Army, written on official note paper and signed by the Chief of Staff (General Le Van Ty). General Bacut said that fighting with army troops began yesterday, but it was not serious. If Mr Diem attacked him in force he would be given immediate command of the entire Hoa Hao Army to fight back, he added. With his long, flowing hair, handsome and boyish face and mystical, deep-set eyes, General Bacut looked more like a prophet or poet than a soldier as he outlined the position of his forces on military maps. But more than 30 battalions of the Vietnamese National Army are stationed in his area, which he said stretched south-west of the Bassac river from ,Ha-Tien on the Cambodian frontier to Ca-Mau on the southernmost tip of Indo-Chlna. The army controls the towns, but he ruled in the countryside, he said. Though the National Army was better equipped than his own, he was confident that he would win any battle because “the morale of the national troops is much inferior to that of Hoa Hao, as they know this Government is not a National Government,” he said.