Mission Will Go On Trying

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

Mission Will Go On Trying

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

LONDON, July 3.

Britain announced today the Commonwealth peace mission on Vietnam will “go on trying no matter how many rebuffs it gets.”

China, North Vietnam and Russia have rejected the idea, which won favour only in Washington and Saigon.

The four-member mission, led by the British Prime Minister, Mr Harold Wilson, hopes to arrange some type of peace negotiations by travelling to capitals involved in the Vietnam war.

The Foreign Office Undersecretary of State, Lord Walston, said today the alternative to peace talks was ‘‘eventual escalation of the Vietnam war into a wider field.” The response from Moscow, Peking and Hanoi left “no doubt in the mind of any reasonable person where the responsibility for

the continuation of the fighting must He,” he said. “No matter how many rebuffs it gets, the British Government will go on trying.” Mr Myles Ponsonby, a British consul-general in Hanoi, is expected to make a fresh appeal to North Vietnam to receive the peace mission. Radio Hanoi has rejected the peace proposal. But there has been no formal reply from North Vietnamese Government officials.

Mr Wilson said his envoys were “still in touch with some of the countries directly concerned,” but did not elaborate.

Most diplomats stationed in London said privately the mission had no chance for success because the communists have publicly rejected Mr Wilson as its leader. The Labour Government is a firm backer of U.S. policy in Vietnam.

It now appears likely that the peace mission ■will not carry out a planned meeting in Geneva next Wednesday with the United Nations Sec-retary-General, U. Thant. As one diplomat put it, “it makes little sense to ask the Pope’s blessings for a crusade that is not going to take place.”