Ghana Denounces China

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31029, 7 April 1966, Page 17

Ghana Denounces China

(N.Z P A.-Reuter—Copyright) ACCRA, April 6. Ghana has accused China of trying to stab its new regime in the back by offering Dr. K w a m e Nkrumah military assistance to return home. The accusations are contained in one of six protest Notes sent to the Chinese Embassy in Accra since the February 24 coup and published in Accra tonight.

In a Note dated March 24. Ghana said it had “ample and concrete proof that the Peoples’ Republic of China assured Kwame Nkrumah of military assistance to overthrow the new regime. “It is partly on this basis that Nkrumah now boasts in Conakry that he will soon return to Ghana to crush what he describes as a rebellion,” the Note said. “In the view of the Government of Ghana, this flagrant interference in the internal affairs of the country constitutes a stab in the back by the Peoples’ Republic of China with whom Ghana has always been on friendly terms.” The Ghana Government said it was releasing the Notes because of “erroneous and unwarranted accusations publicly levelled against it” by the Chinese Government. Five days ago the New China News Agency published a Chinese protest to Ghana accusing it of “re-

peated lying” and of “fabrications.” Ghana’s first Note, four days after the coup, requested’ all Chinese technical experts working in Ghana to leave immediately. The second, on March 4, said the National Liberation Council had been informed that the Chinese Government had begun shipment of “substantial quantities of arms and other war materials” to Guinea with a view “to assisting Kwame Nkrumah to return to stage a counter-re-volution.”

The third Note on March 16 mentioned that some members of the Ghanaian Embassy in Peking had been “subjected to considerable molestation and maltreatment” and insisted that officials of the Chinese Embassy in Accra should leave that day as already requested “to protect them from the anger of the people of Ghana,” and reiterated that the strength of the Embassy staff should remain at 18.