U.K. GOVT. URGED TO DISPLAY INDEPENDENT VIETNAM VIEW

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30776, 14 June 1965, Page 11

U.K. GOVT. URGED TO DISPLAY INDEPENDENT VIETNAM VIEW

(N.Z P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) LONDON, June 13. The “Observer” told the British Government today to stop “clinging on to President Johnson’s coattails” and openly dissent from American policy on Vietnam. The newspaper said there was “alarm being expressed within America as well as among her allies at the

course on which President Johnson has embarked. “Under these circumstances, open dissent would appear to be a better contribution than grudging support. “There may be little that the British Government can do directly to influence President Johnson. But we can help to alert American public opinion to America’s selfisolation, and we can work openly, with Russia and the non-aligned countries, to create conditions in which it

will eventually be possible to hold an international conference open to all the parties engaged in the Vietnam conflict, including the Viet Cong and Peking. “These aims cannot possibly be furthered if we appear simply to be clinging on to President Johnson's coattails.”

The “Sunday Citizen” said: “Americas’ allies are sick at heart. Some, like de Gaulle, are openly critical. In no country is there any worthwhile body of opinion which supports the President’s policy in Vietnam.” The newspaper asked: “How long can we go on supporting by our silence a policy which is hateful to the Labour Government 'and to the greater part of British opinion generally?”

The “News of the World” said support for American policy should not be “blind or unlimited. “We should know how far the President intends to go. Above all, we have the right to insist that the door to a peaceful settlement should at all times be held open,” it said.

The “Sunday Telegraph” claimed in a front-page story that “Left-wing Labour members of Parliament are on the brink of a major revolt against the Government on Vietnam. Some are threatening to challenge Mr Wilson’s unshakeable support for the Americans by withdrawing

their support in the Commons.”

The former British Foreign Secretary, Mr Patrick Gordon Walker, who recently visited South-east Asia to investigate prospects for negotiations to

end the Vietnam conflict, wrote in a “Sunday Citizen” article that if direct war became less likely between the great Powers, the danger of lesser wars increased at the periphery of “areas of confrontation.

“We see in Vietnam today the consequence of failure to stop trouble quickly in this peripheral area. Unhappily, the United Nations is not today in a position to exercise a direct peace-keeping role. I hope it will in due course acquire a force of its own,” he wrote.

The New York “Herald Tribune” called on the United States to help the Vietnamese people find “a hope worth fighting and dying for.” The “New York Times” repeated its recent calls on President Johnson to tell Congress and the American people the reasons behind his actions in increasing United States military commitments.

Underground Test.—The United States conducted a low-yield underground nuclear test on Friday at the Nevada test site—the thirteenth of its kind this year, the Atomic Energy Commission announced. —Washington, June 13.