S. Vietnam Warning

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30559, 30 September 1964, Page 17

S. Vietnam Warning

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) TOKYO, September 29. The United States warned today that increased Communist pressure, including stepped-up infiltration from North Vietnam, could force it into an expansion of the war in South Vietnam.

The official American position was given by Mr William P. Bundy, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, in a major policy address before the Research Institute of Japan. “Expansion of the war outside South Vietnam, while not a course we want or seek, could be • forced upon us by the increased external pressures of the Communists, including a rising scale of infiltration,” Mr Bundy said. The American official did not say in his 18-page survey of the Asian situation how or to what areas the war might be extended. An American spokesman

said yesterday, however, that United States contingency plans include possible bombing of infiltration staging areas in North Vietnam and key areas on the infiltration route through Laos. The same official also said the war against the Communists in South Vietnam could be ended within a few months if infiltration from the north were stopped. Mr Bundy said the aim of American policy was to assist South Vietnam in maintaining its independence and its control over the territory alloted it by the 1954 Geneva agreements which divided the country into two at the 17th parallel.

“We do not aim at overthrowing the Communist regime of North Vietnam, but rather at inducing it to call off the war it directs and supports in. South Vietnam,” he said. Mr Bundy said the neutralisation of South Vietnam would “simply be a step toward a Communist take-over, as the Communists themselves know in pushing it as an interim course for South Vietnam.” He also ruled out negotiations which, he said, “would serve no purpose as long as Hanoi and Peking disregard the agreements they signed in 1954 and 1962 on Vietnam and Laos.”