Time For S.E.A.T.O. To Be Shelved’

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29891, 3 August 1962, Page 9

Time For S.E.A.T.O. To Be Shelved ’

(N.Z.P.A -Reuter —Copyright) HONG KONG, August 2. The “Far Eastern Economic Review” today suggested that the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation had outlived what usefulness it ever had.

"If the treaty can be quietly shelved, the West should be in a better position to acquire the confidence of the neutral Asians, and so promote a more peaceful future." it submitted. The weekly business publication said S.E.A.T.O. originally set up to counter expansionist designs by Communist countries in Southeast Asia at the time of the Geneva agreements in 1954. had been eyed by many South-east Asian nations with suspicion as a neo-col-onialist plot. “The only two to join were the Philippines and Thailand and it has only made them more suspect to other Asians. Pakistan allied herself with the organisation in fear of her Indian neighbour and this further weakened it by attracting Nehru’s hostility." it said. "Where S.E.AT.O. might have been a real help was in bringing Australia and New Zealand closer to Asia, but this is now happening for completely different reasons —the Common Market chiefly

—and Australia's new and important trade with China could only come to harm through a reactivation of 5.E.AT.0.," it said. "The facility with which the British Government came to an agreement with the Prime Minister of Malaya over the future of the British base in Singapore, which would most certainly be needed in any S.E.A.T.O. action, suggests that there is very little prospect of ever using it in this connexion,” said the magazine.