Johnson Affirms Offer To Talk

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30737, 29 April 1965, Page 19

Johnson Affirms Offer To Talk

(N ZP.A- Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, April 28. President Johnson today made a renewed offer to talk anywhere, at any time, with any Government concerned about peace in Vietnam. His offer for talks without conditions would remain open, he said, “waiting for the day when it becomes clear to all that armed attack will not yield domination over others.”

His emphasis on willingness to negotiate with any “Government,” continued United States refusal to consider talks which which would include the Vietnamese National Liberation Front—the Viet Cong —which the United States contends is only a front for the North Vietnamese Government.

The United States, he declared in a nationally televised news conference last night, will maintain a Vietnam policy of “firmness with moderation, readiness for peace with refusal to retreat.”

United States air strikes against North Vietnamese bridges, radar stations and ammunition dumps would cease “the moment that this aggression on South Vietnam ceases.” Against the background of efforts by Britain to call a conference on Cambodian neutrality which might offer a chance for talks on Vietnam, the President said: “I am very hopeful that some ways and means can be found to bring the parties who are interested in South-east Asia to the conference table. “Just what those ways and means will be I don’t know “But every day we explore to the limit of our capacity every possible political and diplomatic move that would bring that about” LITTLE NEW There was little new in the President’s latest explanation of United States policy. But it was stated with unruffled assurance and obvious confidence in the correctness of the course chosen. Criticisms of United States policy were reflected in some of the questions aimed at the President. He answered them all calmly but with a touch of defiance, such as when he was asked whether the United States was not losing rather than making friends around the world with its Vietnam policy. “I think we have friends throughout the world,” the President answered. “I am not concerned with any friends that we have lost. . . . We are following the same policies in Asia that we followed in Europe, that we follow’ed in Turkey and Greece and Iran. “We are resisting aggression, and as long as the aggressors attack, we will stay

there and resist them—whether we make friends or lose friends.” In reply to criticism of the United States bombing raids, he said: “I do sometimes wonder how some people can be so concerned with our bombing a cold bridge of steel and con-

Crete in North Vietnam, but never open their mouths about a bomb being placed in our Embassy in South Vietnam.” But he declined to label his critics as “appeasers”, saying that “we welcome what our friends have to say, whether they agree with us or not.”