Call For Action By U.N. To Halt Fighting

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28983, 26 August 1959, Page 13

Call For Action By U.N. To Halt Fighting

(Rec. 11 p.m.)

NEW YORK, August 24.

Sevetal American newspapers today called for United Nations action to halt the fighting in Laos before the collapse of the Royal Government or the spread of the clashes.

The New York “HeraldTribune” said: “The deterioration of the military situation in Laos is outstripping defensive measures by the United Nations, the United States and the Western world in general to save that little South-east Asian State from being overrun by Communist troops. “If the Communists maintain their present pace, Laos could collapse before you could say Dag Hammarskjold. “With the stakes so high and the peril so grave, there has been an extraordinary silence from the Western capitals and from the headquarters of the United Nations. Almost immediately after receiving a personal appeal for aid from the brother of the Laotian Premier and promising to do what he could, Mr Hammarskjold took off on Sunday for a two-week tour of South America, which is about as far as anyone could get from the explosion in South-east Asia. “The Secretary-General either failed to realise the seriousness of the situation, or he recognised that he was powerless to do much about it,” the newspaper said. “In either case, in view of the speed of the Communist advance, the Laotian Government cannot look for salvation to the good offices of the United Nations. It is rapidly being confronted with the choice between seeking a compromise settlement with the based on a restoration of the International Control Commission, and securing largescale military aid from abroad,

notably the United States.

“This is a choice which Washington and the Western capitals would do well to ponder," the newspaper said.

“The trouble is that fighting is dangerous, regardless of the longterm aims behind it. Violence has a way of getting out of hand. It therefore behoves the free world to move in on this threat immediately and attempt to smother it.”

The “Washington Post” said: “Evan though the size of the new Communist attacks in Laos may be exaggerated, the .j--creased number is very worrisome. It appears that the Communist countries—meaning particularly North Vietnam and Communist China, with at least the acquiescence of the Soviet Union—are making a concerted effort to overthrow the pro-West-ern Government in Vientiane. Whether the Communist aim is actual military conquest or mere subversion, the dilemma for the free world is the same.

“Seemingly this is part of a deliberate Communist effort to keep other countries continually embroiled, whether in Laos, Berlin, Quemoy, or in the states of Bhutan and Sikkim along the Indian border. . . . “Surely the first thing to do is to send the requisite number of international observers to Laos under United Nations auspices to report what is actually happening.” The “Boston Herald” said: "Most observers fee] that neither Mao nor Khrushchev is prepared to risk all-out war over Laos.