Most Portuguese Resistance Over

Press, Volume C, Issue 29702, 21 December 1961, Page 15

Most Portuguese Resistance Over

(AZ-P-A.-Reuier-— Copyright) LISBON, December 20. The Portuguese Government has admitted that Indian troops have captured Panjim, the main town of Goa, but said early today it assumed that Portuguese forces were continuing their resistance further south. An official spokesman said earlier that Portuguese troops were “heroically defending” the key port of Marmagao. which New Delhi claims was entered by troops and two Indian warships last night.

The British United Press reported from New Delhi that Indian troops early today captured Marmagao, according to Indian officials. It was reported that about 1500 Portuguese soldiers laid down their arms before the Indian command, said the news agency. Altogether, about 3500 Portuguese had now surrendered their arms in Goa, said the officials. Reuter, quoting authoritative sources in a dispatch from Belgaum. also reported that Marmagao had fallen. The sources described the Marmagao action as the “last pocket of Portuguese resistance in Goa.” The news agency reported from New Delhi that Indian troops were fanning out from the main towns of Goa to round up Portuguese stragglers. In Lisbon, the Portuguese Minister of State, Dr. Jose Correira de Oliviera told an early morning press conference that communications with Goa were cut. but in the absence of Indian claims to have occupied the whole of Goa one could assume Portuguese resistance was continuing. Fighting was going on along a heavily-fortified line, planned in advance, which passed through the town of Vasco da Gama, south of Panjim. "But we know that the Portuguese Army could never be strong enough to reverse the military situation,” he said The news about the line of resistance had come from the crews of two airliners which arrived in Lisbon from Goa last night with refugees The admission of the fall of Panjim came after Government members read a dispatch from Gordon Martin. Reuter’s special correspondent in Panjim—the first independent confirmation of yesterday’s Indian claim to have seized the town Martin’s dispatch, his first since Panjim surrendered, said the streets of the town were yesterday thronged with jubilant Hindus wearing the traditional dhoti (white loincloth) and Gandhi cap—the symbol of resistance to the British occupation of India. The Indian flag was run up over the former Portuguese Governor’s palace at 11 am. local time yesterday as white surrender flags fluttered from the police station and other points.

The Governor - General. General Manuel Antonio Vassalo de Silver, had set up last-ditch headquarters round Vasco da Gama, and spasmodic firing continued in Panjim yesterday, Martin reported. Today the Administration is due to be handed over to a local junta. In New York, the United States was reported to have dropped tentative plans to raise the Goa question in the United Nations General Assembly after the Security Council’s failure to act. Observers said ’ the decision was tantamount to recogni-

tion that the United Nations was powerless to act in this matter. The Indian Prime Minister (Mr Nehru) said in New Delhi yesterday: “Those people who have been criticising us in the Security Council and elsewhere obviously are rather ignorant of the facts.” If India had failed to act there would have been a vacuum in Goa “and the only persons who could have profited would have been lawless and anti-social elements. In fact, they were beginning to do it."