‘Stop Bombing As First Step’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31114, 18 July 1966, Page 11

‘Stop Bombing As First Step’

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) NEW DELHI, July 17. The Indian Prime Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi, said today there was “no possibility” of the Soviet Union agreeing to a peace conference on Vietnam unless American bombing of North Vietnam stopped.

Mrs Gandhi made the statement to reporters when she arrived at New Delhi airport from a four-day visit to Moscow. During the visit she had lengthy talks on Vietnam with the Soviet Premier, Mr Alexei Kosygin. Questioned on her unsuccessful attempt to get the Soviet Union—co-chairman of the 1954 Geneva conference on Indo-China—to agree to a re-

convening, Mrs Gandhi said she had not expected success. But one had to keep trying for a break-through. The Soviet refusal to move on the conference without a go-ahead from Hanoi was “understandable really,” she said. “The view persisting is that a stoppage of the bombing is the first stage, and without that there’s no possibility at all of their agreeing to a conference,” said Mrs Gandhi. Asked if she shared this view, she said she did, adding that the bombing was not conductive to people sitting down for peace talks. A joint communique published in Moscow as Mrs Gandhi left for home said the bombing should be stopped immediately. It said intensification of Vietnam hostilities and United States bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong had brought a dangerous situation in South-east Asia.