PEACE TREATY IN ASIA

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28531, 10 March 1958, Page 9

PEACE TREATY IN ASIA

Soviet Proposal To S.E.A.T.O. Members

(N-Z- Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8 p.m.) MOSCOW, March 8. The Soviet Union tonight proposed a “collective peace treaty” in Asia in a statement issued through the news agency, Tass, on the eve of the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation’s meeting in Manila. The statement said: “Western aggressive circles want to turn the territories of Asian members of S.E.A.T.O. into bridgeheads on to which inevitably would fall answering blows directed against the aggressor.”

The statement also warned Asian members of S.E.A.T.O. that distance from other theatres of war would not save them if they allowed themselves to be linked with Western aggressive plans.

The statement said that the realisation of plans to link S.E.A.T.O. with N.A.T.O. and the Bagdad Pact would mean “the final conversion of S.E.A.T.O. into an appendix of the main aggressive pact—N.A.T.O. “One must also bear in mind that such a step might also draw in its train involvement of these countries in a conflict in regions tens of thousands of miles away. “Millions of people are demanding that nations should take the road to peaceful coexistence and international co-operation before it is too late.”

Recalling that the Soviet Union had urged a summit meeting in the near future, it said: “Participants in the S.E.A.T.O. bloc are now undertaking steps which have nothing in common with the interests of preserving peace and which contribute, on the contrary, to the aggravation of the international situation and an undermining of the principles of peaceful coexistence, which are the basis of the historical decisions taken by the Bandung Conference of 29 Asian and African countries.”

In proposing a Far East Pact, the statement said it might be an important step in the direction of establishing a system of collective security in Asia and Europe. Soviet ruling circles considered it necessary to draw the attention of S.E.A.T.O. members to the “grave responsibility they incur by trying to aggravate the international situation still further.”