LABOUR POLICY ON VIETNAM AID

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31023, 31 March 1966, Page 1

LABOUR POLICY ON VIETNAM AID

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, March 30. The Leader of the Opposition (Mr Kirk) reiterated today that Labour put greater emphasis on constructive civilian aid in South Vietnam than military aid.

•This is the field in which New Zealand can best and more adequately play its part,” he said.

Mr Kirk, commenting on remarks made by the Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) yesterday, said Labour was alive to the fact that a destructive campaign could leave in its wake conditions in which the very communism the Government sought to condemn could breed.

"The biggest international task of the day is how to end the war in Vietfiam—not how to escalate it.

“Labour i% and always has been, concerned with New Zealand’s vital interests—the rapid restoration of peace and our international commitments,” he said. The Opposition Leader said there was no easy solution to the complex situation in Vietnam and said the Prime Minister himself had said military support alone would not defeat communism.

“More recently Dean Rusk. United States Secretary of State, told the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee that without the United States aid programme in Vietnam, the Americans could win the major battles and still lose the war and the peace. “This view expresses something that we feel deeply,” said Mr Kirk. Yesterday the Prime Minis-

ter claimed Mr Kirk’s flood of both “for and against” statements on military aid to Vietnam would read like pathetic comic opera if the subject itself was not so tragic.