VIETNAM ‘COUNTER CONFERENCE’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31209, 5 November 1966, Page 15

VIETNAM ‘COUNTER CONFERENCE’

Meeting To Be Called By Cambodia (N .Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copvrxgnt) PHNOM PENH, November 4. The Cambodian Chief of State, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, announced yesterday that a Vietnam “counter conference” will be held here in a few weeks to reply to recent conferences in Manila and New Delhi.

It will be attended by leaders of North Vietnam, the South Vietnam Liberation Front and Cambodia.

The Prince said the seven - nation Manila talks, attended by President Johnson and America’s Vietnam war allies, made a travesty of the reality in Vietnam.

A recent non-aligned “summit” between President Tito, of Yugoslavia, President Nasser, of the United Arab Republic, and Mrs Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, in New Delhi, did not distinguish between aggressors and victims of aggression, he said The North Vietnamese Premier and Foreign Minister. Pham Van Dong; and Nguyen Huu Tho, the President of the Presidium of the central committee of the National Liberation Front, would take part. Laos was not invited since

Prime Minister Prince Souvanna Phouma did not represent the entire Laotian people and the Pathet Lao chief, Prince Souphannouvong, only represented a movement, he said. Prince Sihanouk reaffirmed Cambodia’s neutrality in the Vietnam war and declared it would not intervene materially or physically. Cambodia, as an Indo-Chin-

ese state, had the right to demand peace, independence, justice and survival for another Indo-Chinese people, he said.

It only wanted to call for self-determination for the Vietnamese people and an end to foreign intervention. Only correspondents from the “Socialist camp” and France would be admitted to the talks, he said.