Switch In U.S. Policy On Neutralism?

Press, Volume C, Issue 29674, 18 November 1961, Page 11

Switch In U.S. Policy On Neutralism?

<N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright)

SEATTLE (Washington), November 17. President Kennedy took what seemed to be a new, tougher stand toward “certain countries” wavering between neutrality and communism last night, United Press International said.

ion, UPI. said. This, however, was - not the case last night, the agency said. Mr Kennedy stuck rigidly to his text except for the one sentence involving neutrals After the speech, his press secretary (Mr Pierre Salinger) checked with Mr Kennedy. Mr Salinger then told re-

His actual language, however, was softened considerably between the time an advance speech copy was issued by the White House and Mr Kennedy’s actual delivery of an address opening a four-day tour of the Western part of the nation. In a speech prepared for delivery, President Kennedy said the United States was “determined to prevent certain nations from abandoning neutrality, and to prevent certain others from adopting it.” The President discarded this sentence, however, when he delivered his address to an audience of 11,060 persons, gathered in a huge basketball gymnasium to observe the 100th anniversary of the University of Washington. He dropped the “determined to prevent” line and said instead “We find some who call themselves neutral who are our friends and sympathetic to us, and others who call themselves neutral who are unremittingly hostile to us." Mr Kennedy disliked speaking from prepared texts and frequently changed them in delivery, with his staff assuring reporters on most occasions that the President “stands behind” the written, as well as the spoken vers-

porters: "He chooses to stand by his text as delivered.” Later, a Presidential adviser said the original language represented no major shift in policy: that the President meant that the United States did not want allies to become neutrals, or neutrals to become Communist.