Johnson-Nixon Vietnam Row

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31210, 7 November 1966, Page 17

Johnson-Nixon Vietnam Row

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright)

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6. The closing stages of the generally apathetic election campaign blazed into a personal row this week-end between the President and the Republican former VicePresident, Mr Richard Nixon, who commented unfavourably on the Manila conference of the Vietnam allies.

Mr Johnson said that Mr Nixon, the only national figure in the Republican Party to mount a countrywide campaign for his party’s candidates. did not “serve his country well” by questioning the wisdom of the Manila decisions. ' President Johnson also described Mr Nixon as a man who did not know what was going on when he was a member of the Eisenhower Administration from 1952-60. “Shocking Display” Mr Nixon, not himself running for office this year, reported that the President had been guilty of a “shocking display of temper.” He praised Mr Johnson as “probably the hardest working President of this century.” But he managed to make it clear that he does not think Mr Johnson had answered any of a series of questions lie posed about Vietnam. Mr Nixon called anew today for answers to the questions and accused Mr Johnson

of ignoring “the people’s right to know” about American policy in Vietnam. Mr Nixon said in a statement that the President in his attack on him “had struck at the very roots of the right of dissent,” and asked: “Is every public figure who rationally questions the means to achieve our goals in Vietnam to become the victim of a Presidential attack to silence his dissent?” Mr Nixon said Mr Johnson’s policies “resign us to a war that could last five years and produce more American casualties than Korea.”

The Republican spokesman said that as a past supporter

in foreign capitals of the President and the American commitment in Vietnam he intended “to lay it on the line tomorrow, to stand up and tell the President and the country what I believe is wrong with the means we are using to achieve our goals in Vietnam.” Among the issues Mr Nixon said he would raise anew in two nation-wide broadcasts are the escalation of United States forces in Vietnam, tax increases to finance the war, the nature and size of the military effort needed to end the war and American concessions designed to bring the Communists to the conference table.