Ky Peace Offer To Buddhists

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31101, 2 July 1966, Page 15

Ky Peace Offer To Buddhists

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter—Copyright) SAIGON, July 1. The South Vietnamese Prime Minister, General Ky yesterday offered to make peace with his Buddhist opponents by promising to release all agitators and to pay compensation for damaged pagodas.

In a conciliatory letter to the moderate Buddhist leader, Thic Tam Chau, General Ky said he regretted last week's raid on the Buddhist pagoda headquarters in Saigon. The raid on the headquarters, centre of the last Buddhist resistance in Saigon, heralded the collapse of their agitation directed at restoring civilian rule in South Vietnam. General Ky’s letter, released by a Buddhist spokesman, said the Government would be lenient towards rebellious troops and civil servants in the northern provinces.

The Prime Minister also said the recent political crisis was due to a misunderstanding and he urged the Buddhists to co-operate with the Government. The letter comes three days after the aged patriach of South Vietnam’s Unified Buddhist Church, Thich Tinh Khiet, urged his senior monks to come to terms with the Government. The Buddhist extremist leader of the northern city of Hue, Thich Tri Quang, continued his three-week-old hunger strike in a Saigon clinic today in a protest against the ruling military junta.