DIPLOMAT’S SUICIDE

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28251, 12 April 1957, Page 13

DIPLOMAT’S SUICIDE

Pearson Hits At U.S. OTTAWA, April 10. Mr Lester Pearson, the Canadian External Affairs Minister, said today that Canada will take steps to ensure that information on security matters passed to the United States was not used for “wrong purposes in the future.”

Mr Pearson made the statement in the House of Commons as the result of the suicide of the Canadian Ambassador (Mr Herbert Norman) at Cairo last week. Mr Arnold Heeney, Canadian Ambassador at Washington, delivered a communication to the United States State Department on the matter. Mr Pearson said that intervention by an agency of a foreign government in Canadian affairs to harass a Canadian* citizen was “intolerable and should not take place.” He said that Canada was perfectly capable of looking after its own security affairs. “If we fail in the discharge of our security responsibilities as a government, we are answerable to our own people, and not to a sub-committee of any foreign legislature,” Mr Pearson said. In Washington the Eisenhower Administration formally disclaimed today any responsibility for airing charges of Communist ties made against Mr Norman. It did so in a Note to Canada. The Canadian Government has said that its own investigations had cleared Mr Norman. The State Department also made public the text of the formal Canadian protest made on March 18 about the publication of the accusations. The Canadian Note denounced “irresponsible allegations,” and made what is called “a protest in the strongest terms.”