Peace Hints Persist

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30842, 30 August 1965, Page 13

Peace Hints Persist

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright)

WASHINGTON, August 29. Reports persisted today that Washington had received peace hints from North Vietnam through third parties. The hardest of these reports was that an authorised North Vietnamese representative in Europe had passed the word to Washington last Monday through a European professor.

This was reported to have said that if the United States were genuinely sincere when it talked of a free choice in South Vietnam, a peaceful solution to the conflict might be worked out. Still other reports said that the Administration had been encouraged to believe that Hanoi was now prepared to drop its previous demand that withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam should precede any peace talks. These and other assertions came in the face of the statement by Mr Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State, at a press conference yesterday that the United States was still looking for an indication from the Communist side that they were interested in a peaceful settlement. “I cannot report any response that is clearly indicative of a move towards peace in this situation,” he said. CONSTANT CONTACT

Mr Rusk and others have constantly stressed that there is no lack of contact with the other side.

Signals and messages have been passed between them, often through tl’rd parties, ever since the bombing of North Vietnam began last February. The difficulty, according to Washington, is that Hanoi so far has not given any indication that it is prepared to

stop infiltrating men and materials into South Vietnam. THROUGH ALGIERS

Informed sources, quoted by United Press International, said that the U tited Nations' Secretary-General, U Thant, acting through intermediaries in Algiers, has been probing peace possibilities with leaders of China, North Vietnam and the Viet Cong rebels. A United Nations official declined to comment on reports that U Thant this month sent a note to the Governments concerned in the Vietnam fighting outlining his ideas for a peaceful settlement of the conflict.