30,000 Mourners For Killed Rioters

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30534, 1 September 1964, Page 17

30,000 Mourners For Killed Rioters

< N Z.P-A.-Reuter—Copyright) SAIGON, August 31. About 30,000 Roman Catholics yesterday mourned for the six who died when troops opened fire on Catholic demonstrators storming the National Military Headquarters in Saigon last Thursday.

The funeral, procession, was more than a mile long.

The victims, including two women, were saluted by armed military police as they passed the scene of the shooting which yesterday was a sea of barbed wire to prevent new incidents.

A vice premier and two generals attended the requiem mass. The Buddhist hierarchy was also represented by a senior monk. Speakers at the funeral called for religious toleration and unity, but criticised the colonel who ordered the shooting. Roman Catholics wearing white for mourning came from outlying districts in government vehicles. Rusk’s Advice In Washington, Mr Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State, suggested that feuding Roman Catholics and Buddhists in South Vietnam should agree to a moratorium and unite to prosecute the war against the Viet Cong guerrillas. The United States thought that religious rivalries in South Vietnam were among matters that should be put aside until victory was achieved, he said. American confidence in the outcome of the struggle against the Viet Cong was based on the knowledge that no group in South Vietnam seemed to want to turn to Hanoi for its answers, he said. Rhanh Accuses

South Vietnam’s Premier, Major General Nguyen Khanh, has accused the American Ambassador, General Maxwell Taylor, of supporting his political rival. Major General Duong Van Minh, known as “Big Minh,” the “New York Herald Tribune” said today. General Khanh went to Da Lat several days ago to rest

during continued religious rioting in Saigon, and appointed a Harvard-educated economist, Nguyen Zuan Oanh, as acting premier. With “Big Minh” and Lieutenant General Tran Thien Kheim, General Khanh is a member of the military triumvirate now ruling South Vietnam. The “Herald-Tribune” correspondent said that during an interview General Khanh said General Taylor “has sentiments for Big Minh and wants him to come to power.” General Khanh said he offered his. support for General Minh but added he feared that he might become “a puppet for the neutralists.”