COLOURED DIPLOMATS

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29718, 11 January 1962, Page 9

COLOURED DIPLOMATS

‘More Insults In America’ (N.Z.P.A. -Reuter—Copyright) PALM BEACH (Florida), January 10. Racial "insults” to nonwhite foreign diplomats in Washington had probably increased in the last year, the State Department protocol chief, Mr Angier Biddle Duke, said last night. He also reported that there was almost a "crisis of conscience” among people in the Washington area, which was leading to a changed attitude towards coloured envoys. Mr Duke said no great progress was being made in the campaign for equal treatment of diplomats in getting housing in the American capital. In remarks prepared for delivery to a cultural group in Palm Beach, the diplomat said multi-million dollar United States economic aid to struggling nations could be ruined by insulting acts of prejudice to their diplomats in the United States. He singled out the State visit last year by the PresiIwk the Sudan, Ibrahim Abboud, as a "success story” in that it was free of acts of discrimination.

‘ President Abboud was somewhat lucky,” Mr Duke said. "It does not always go as smoothly as that.” He said the Prime Minister of another African country had been "bewildered and embarrassed" on learning that a hote! where he stayed had lifted its segregation policy only for the time of his stay there.