China Accuses U.S. Of Spraying Poisons

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30794, 5 July 1965, Page 13

China Accuses U.S. Of Spraying Poisons

(N Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

PEKING, July 3. China today accused the United States of using “toxic chemicals” in the Vietnamese war.

The charge was made by the New China News Agency, the official Chinese news service. It said the United States Government had “dispatched planes to spray toxic chemi-

cals, in an attempt to poison South Vietnamese peaceful citizens.”

The planes had raided Tra Vinh province from June 7 to 20. Their job was “to spray large quantities of toxic chemicals, poisoning 30,000 people and destroying crops on an area of more than 30 square kilometres,” it said. The agency said that this and the “recent war escalation in South Vietnam” gave President Johnson’s professed desire for peace a “particularly false ring.” The New China News Agency said the American Government launched a peace offensive in early June and that Mr Johnson has called for peace talks 13 times. “The British Prime Minister, Mr Harold Wilson, the Indian Prime Minister, Mr Shastri, and their like suddenly trotted out their ‘peace mission,’ ‘cease-fire on all sides,’ and other formulae to beat the drum for the United States offensive.”

The agency said the United States “peace hoax was further exposed yesterday when the South Korean puppet authorities announced their decision to send an additional

division to South Vietnam to help the United States slaughter the South Vietnamese people,” “The use of Asians to fight Asians forms part of the United States plot to expand its aggressive war in Vietnam,” the agency said. It attacked the use of United States paratroopers and “Australian accomplices” in action against the Communists in South Vietnam last week.

U.S. Counts Its Battle Deaths

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) WASHINGTON, July 3. The United States Defence Department listed 12 additional United States dead in Vietnam this week. The fatalities from hostile action this year already exceed the total for all of 1964. In the first 187 days of 1965, the department reported, there had been 261 battle deaths.

For the three previous years, the number of dead as the result of hostilities was 251.