MESSAGE ON VIETNAM FROM NKRUMAH

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30823, 7 August 1965, Page 15

MESSAGE ON VIETNAM FROM NKRUMAH

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright)

WASHINGTON, August 6.

A special message concerning Vietnam was being sent to President Johnson today by the President of Shaira, Dr. Nkrumah, but there was no sign that the move would lead quickly to peace talks, says the Associated Press,

Reports from Accra said that immediately after the return yesterday of a Ghanian emissary who had met the North Vietnamese Chief, Mr Ho Chi Minh, in Hanoi, Dr. Nkrumah dispatched his Foreign Minister, Mr Alex Quaison-Sackey, to Washington with the message. Mr Quaison-Sackey, who is president of the United Nations General Assembly, was due in New York today, and it was expected that President Johnson would receive him in Washington. While details of Dr. Nkrumah’s message were not available in advance, informed sources doubted whether it would lead to a breakthrough in the impasse over negotiations to end the Vietnam war. President Johnson has offered to enter into unconditional discussions with any Government.

in accord with the Communist political programme. United States officials said that Hanoi has been vague on whether it will insist on its four points as a precondition for talks. Dr Nkrumah has been critical of United States actions in Vietnam and has called for a halt in the bombing of the North as a way to get negotiations going. The United States National Republican Congressional Committee meanwhile said:

Hanoi has put forward a four-point proposal, including the withdrawal of United States forces from South Vietnam and a settlement there

such a presidential request. One might be that a declaration of war could interfere with peace negotiations through the United Nations or elsewhere, he said. In any case, “the question should be put before Congress—the President should come before Congress and lay his cards on the table,” he said.

“We believe that the President’s latest revelation of his aims points to a coming surrender.” "Reappraisal” An editorial in the committee’s news-letter said that after an “agonising reappraisment, the President seems ready to discuss, among other things, Hanoi’s proposals of last April as a basis for settlement. . . . Among them are complete United States military withdrawal from South Vietnam and an arrangement of South Vietnam's internal affairs as proposed by the National Liberation Front.” A Republican leader, Mr Gerald Ford, has urged Mr Johnson to ask Congress to declare war on North Vietnam. “It would be the honest thing to do under the circumstances, considering our present commitment,” he said. Mr Ford stressed that there might be “extenuating circumstances” that would preclude