SPEECH BY STEVENSON

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30447, 22 May 1964, Page 13

SPEECH BY STEVENSON

(N Z P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK, May 21. The United States Ambassador to the United Nations (Mr Adlai Stevenson) makes an “extremely important” speech today in the Security Council on the “deteriorating situation in South-east Asia.”

Mr Stevenson was recalled from London yesterday for urgent talks on the Laos crisis. He will make his statement as the 11-member Security Council resumes debate on Cambodian charges that the United States and South Vietnam have committeed “repeated acts of aggression” against the neutralist State. On his arrival in New York from London yesterday Mr

Stevenson told reporters that Communists in Laos had “completely disregarded the Geneva agreements” on Laotian neutrality.

He said he did not know whether the wars in South Vietnam and Laos were “coordinated.”

Conference Proposed

In Paris yesterday official sources said the French Government had proposed a conference to discuss Laos. It would be attended by the signatories of the 1962 declaration of Laotian neutrality. The proposal was made to Britain and the Soviet Union as co-chairmen of the Geneva conference which guaranteed the neutrality. President de Gaulle today attends a meeting in Paris of the French Council of Ministers at which the Foreign Minister (Mr Couve de Murville) will report oh the Laos situation.