U.S. REPLY TO CHINA

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29067, 2 December 1959, Page 17

U.S. REPLY TO CHINA

“Fabricated Claim”

WASHINGTON, November 30.

State Department today branded as “absurd and fabricated” Communist China’s charge that the United States kidnapped a Chinese Communist trade representative in Bombay last Friday.

The department spokesman (Mr Lincoln White! said the United States version of the incident was the “full facts." This was his comment on a statement by the Indian Prime Minister (Mr Nehru) that both the United States and Chinese accounts sounded "more like some piece of fiction than fact. ’ “The Chinese Communist charge of kidnapping is absurd. * Mr White said. “The United States Embassy statement shows clearly that the Chinese Communist statement is an attempt to cover up their own illegal behaviour by a fabricated countercharge.” In What United Press International said constituted an indirect reply to Mr Nehru, Mr White said: “We are giving you the full facts as put out by the Embassy. ... I emphasise the word facts.” Mr White said there was no reason to doubt the report by Marine Sergeant Robert Armstrong. Much of the report could be corroborated by eye-witness accounts of Indian neighbours who called the Bombay police, he said. Mr White refused to speculate whether Mr Chang had changed his mind about defecting or had been part of an elaborate plot intended to embarrass the United States.