HO SURE OF VICTORY

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31031, 11 April 1966, Page 9

HO SURE OF VICTORY

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

TOKYO, April 10.

President Ho Chi Minh, of North Vietnam, has conceded that the Vietnamese war “is to be a protracted and arduous one” but said the Viet Cong were sure to be victorious ultimately.

In a television interview shown in Tokyo last night, he said: “The more ferocious the enemy is, the more the Vietnamese people are closely

united and firmly determined to defeat him. In the end the United States imperialists will inevitably be defeated. “Although the Vietnamese people’s resistance war against United States aggression and for national salvation is to be a protracted and arduous one, it is sure to be victorious.”

The interview, filmed on March 14 in Hanoi by the Nippon Dempa news agency, was shown last night by the Japan National Broadcasting Corporation.

President Ho said the United States had failed militarily and politically, des-

cribed its peace efforts as a hoax and said it was scheming to extend the war to Laos and Cambodia. “The more the United States imperialists bring troops into South Vietnam and intensify air raids against towns and villages of the Democratic Republic of (North) Vietnam, the heavier are their defeats. ... “On the international front, the American so-called ‘peace offensive’ has also failed. It has not been able to deceive anybody. Instead, it has only made the United States more isolated."

President Ho added: “The acts of aggression by the American imperialists and their henchmen against Laos and Cambodia are part of the United States scheme to extend the war of aggression to the whole of Indo-China.’’ Casualty Figures

He said that in the first months of this year the Viet Cong had wiped out 32,000 of their opponents, including 16,000 Americans, while up to March 8 North Vietnam had “blasted out of the skies over 900 United States planes." The recent Honolulu conference, attended by President Johnson and top Vietnamese and American leaders, had discussed the question of “stepping up the real war and the sham peace,” President Ho said. The Vietnamese were summoned to receive instructions directly from their American masters and thus stood exposed still more as "traitors to their country and faithful lackeys of the United States aggressors,” he said. He added that President Johnson’s "search for peace" was a hoax.