DRAMATIC TRUCE

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29265, 25 July 1960, Page 15

DRAMATIC TRUCE

Rockefeller To Support Nixon 9 s Campaign (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) CHICAGO, July 24. Republican leaders were confident today that a dramatic truce negotiated by Vice-President Richard Nixon and Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York had improved their prospects for retaining the White House in the Presidential election next November. Their hopes rose as a result of a secret eight-hour conference in which Mr Nixpn, the prospective Republican Presidential candidate, reached agreement with Mr Rockefeller to end their long-standing feud over party policy. For the party leaders, the eleventh-hour reconciliation by the two rivals banished the nightmare that Mr Nixon would have to fight Senator John Kennedy, the Democratic Presidential nominee, without Governor Rockefeller’s aid.

Out of the conference, which ended shortly L-efore dawn in Mr Rockefeller’s New York flat yesterday, came a 14-pbint programme which both said should be incorporated in the party platform to be presented to the delegates at the party ' convention later next week.

The programme, In essence, was the equivalent of a mutual assistance pact, pledging Mr Rockefeller’s support to Mr Nixon’s candidacy and committing Mr Nixon to a platform for which the Governor said he had been fighting all along. If all goes well and the programme is incorporated into the platform, Mr Nixon will have a powerful ally in the coming election campaign. Governor Rockefeller’s statement that he could support the proposed platform “with pride and vigour” was sweet music to those Republicans who feared that his earlier criticisms «of Mr Nixon would split the party and play into the hands of the Democrats.

The Republicans concede that Senator Kennedy is a formidable opponent and that he will probably need to carry only the normally Democratic Southern States, New York and a few other Northern States to win the Presidency in November. Governor Rockefeller’s pledge to support the Republican nominee, if the proposed platform is adopted, convinced the party leaders that he would hold New York for the Republicans and elsewhere attract Democrats and independents who might otherwise be reluctant to vote for Mr Nixon. But if Governor Rockefeller opened the door to party unity, he slammed it against his own nomination as the Viee-Presi-dential candidate on the Republican ticket. He insisted again yesterday that

he would not accept the nomination under any circumstances and said he would refuse to Change his mind even if President Eisenhower asked him to re-consider.

Many observers accepted the explanation that Mr Rockefeller still had to be convinced that Mr Nixon could win in November and that he felt that his association with a losing ticket would wreck his chances of taking over the party leadership and the Presidential nomination in 1964.

The statement issued by Mr Rockefeller said that the VicePresident and he had reached agreement on a number of specific and basic positions on foreign policy and national defence ,

Mr Rockefeller said he a’nd Mr Nixon also had concurred on the nation’s economy and planks for the Republican platform, including civil rights, farm programmes. labour, disarmament, health insurance and education. The two men agreed the platform should contain a “strong” civil rights plank. They said the civil rights programme would express “support for the objectives of the sit-in demonstrators" in the South and would commend businessmen who had begun serving food at their lunch counters to negroes.

Mr Rockefeller’s statement said the 14 points agreed on by him and Mr Nixon “constitute the basic position for which I have been fighting.”