Good Prospects For U.S. Foreign Aid Bill

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27680, 9 June 1955, Page 13

Good Prospects For U.S. Foreign Aid Bill

[Specially written for the N.Z.P.A. by FRANK OLIVERI (Rec. 7 p.m.) WASHINGTON, June 7. There is now every prospect that President Eisenhower will get enacted a measure near his heart and at the centre of his foreign policies —the foreign aid programme for which he has been asking for some months. » The bill passed the Senate after a hazardous passage and now the prospects in the House of Representatives look good. The bill will give the Administration in the coming fiscal year no less than 1,451,000,000 dollars with which to aid Asian countries with military assistance and expanded economic aid in the fight against .Communist aggression and expansion.* The fight for this programme is not over, but it looks as good as won, and the President must be breathing a sigh of relief because opposition to it has been not only in his own party in Congress but within his own Cabinet Support of Democrats Ironically, the bill was masterminded through the Senate by the Democratic Opposition which successfully fought every effort of Republican leadership to emasculate the bill. Its passage was a feather in the cap of Mr Walter George, the farseeing chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. In the end, liberal minded Republicans voted with a majority of the Democrats and left a handful .of. the Republican old guard and a few likeminded Southern Democrats go on record agaihst it. Had there been a Republican/ majority in the Senate, the bill must have emerged but a shadow off its original self. strongest in the fight against

the President’s chief lieutenant in Congress, Senator Knowland. It is small wonder perhaps that the President has since expressed himself forcibly on the selection of future Vice-Presidential candidates. Republicans recognise they will scarcely be able to win the election in 1956 without Mr Eisenhower, but there is a move within the party to offset his un-Republican liberality of mind by forcing Senator Knowland upon him as a vice presidential candidate if he is a candidate.

The President has said somewhat forcibly that he believes a presidential nominee should resign his nomination if he does not get the likeminded vice presidential nominee he wants. When the House completes action on the Foreign Aid Bill, which it will undoubtedly do some time before the proposed Big Four meeting, it will be welcome news throughout the free sections of the Far East—an area of the world which had dropped out of the news and the public mind until Peking’s release of the four American airmen. Since the virtual cease-fire in Formosa Strait achieved by the simple means of the relaxation of pressure by Peking, it has been almost bad form here to mention that troubled area, but there is no reason to suppose that inherent dangers there have been removed. k Peking brought the Formosa issue almost to white heat, and Peking cooled it off again through the medium of moderate statements from Mr Chou En-lai.’ As a result of that changed attitude, India is being allowed to mediate, but those in close touch with the situation of the Formosa Strait realise that the Communist build-un there could

The return of the four airmen and the prospective release of 11 more were welcomed throughout the country with pleasure and a sigh of relief. But it is recognised by hardheaded observers that the gesture is not necessarily the synonym of policy, and it is the policies of Peking that interest Washington. In that connexion the visit here of Mr Kishna Menon is awaited with unusual interest and keen anticipation. He can of course bring the Administration as close to the mind of Peking as perhaps it can get short of face to face negotiation. It is still thought by many here that in spite of Mr Chou’s repeated declarations that Formosa must go to Communist China, it is a matter that can wait and that membership in the United Nations is what he wants first.

Undoubtedly his present “moderate* line will do his cause no harm in thia matter when the Assembly meets towards the end of the year. There are those who think that if the Big Four meeting is reasonably successful in relaxing tension this summer it will be more than the United States ‘can do to keep Peking out of the Assembly at the next meeting if America’s inclinations in that direction remain unchanged. But perhaps they will be changed, for what happens at the Big Four meeting seems bound to have direct bearing on developments in the Formosa area.