Viet Cong Weapons

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30808, 21 July 1965, Page 16

Viet Cong Weapons

Sir, —You reported the Minister of Defence (Mr Eyre) as saying when addressing the Victoria University National Club, “Anyone who wants evidence of this [we are not sending troops to fight under-privileged peasants in South Vietnam] can find it in the Chinese weapons the Viet Cong are using ... in the special report of the International Control Commission of 1962.” As I am sure many readers would like to hear this evidence, would you quote the figures of this report relating to the number of Chinese weapons being used and the percentage this made of the Viet Cong weaponry? —Yours, etc., T. R. SHANKS. I Nelson Creek, July 5, 1965. [The Minister of Defence, Mr Eyre, replies: “First let

me correct a misapprehension. I did not quote the International Control Commission’s special report of July, 1962, as evidence that the Viet Cong guerrillas are using specifically Communist Chinese weapons, but that both are part of Ihe evidence that the struggle in Vietnam is not. a civil war. The special report says there is evidence to show that armed and unarmed personnel, arms, munitions, and supplies have been sent from the zone in the north to the south with the object of supporting, organissing, and carrying out hostile activities, including armed attacks, directed against the Armed Forces and Administration of the zone in the south.' The extent of Viet Cong reliance on external sources for weapons is set out in the Government’s White Paper. The evidence about the supply and use of Communist Chinese weapons is conclusive. For example, of 101 weapons captured on April 5 and 6 in the far south of the country, all but eight were of Chinese Communist origin, including all the larger weapons such as mortars and rocket-launchers.”]