REPLACE KY DEMAND BY SENATOR FULBRIGHT

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31276, 24 January 1967, Page 13

REPLACE KY DEMAND BY SENATOR FULBRIGHT

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) WASHINGTON, January 23. Senator William Fulbright said yesterday that the United States should replace Prime Minister Ky of South Vietnam if he refuses to negotiate with the Viet Cong.

“He’s there only because we put him in,” Senator Fulbright said in a television interview. “He couldn’t last two weeks, I don’t think, without our support.”

Ky has “neither a political base of his own, nor any military support except our own,’’ said Senator Fulbright, chairmar of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a leading critic of United States policies in South-east Asia.

Senator Fulbright announced during the week-end his own plan to end the war. It included a proposal that the United States recognise the National Liberation Front, political arm of the Viet Cong, as a legitimate party in the war and bring pressure on South Vietnam to seek negotiations with the Viet Cong. “If the present Government won’t do what we tell them to do,” he said, “we could get a new government. I don’t think he (Ky) has any choice but to follow the United States wishes.” Vice-President Hubert Humphrey said, however, that the Vietnam war was more likely to be negotiated through “quiet and subtle, almost unnoticed diplomacy” rather than “grandiose schemes” put forth publicly. In a separate television interview, the Vice-President was asked about Senator Fulbright’S latest book on foreign policy, “The Arrogance of Power.” which was published today. Mr Humphrey said he disagreed with Senator Fulbright but wrs “not unhappy” that the senator had presented alternate proposals for negotiating a solution to the war. Mr Humphrey said the United States had used “other means than sheer force,” in an effort to reach a settlement. He cited efforts of Pope

Paul, the International Control Commission, the United Nations and third parties in contact with North Vietnam, as well as attempts to revive the Geneva conference. Mr Humphrey said “quiet diplomacy, carefully thoughtout moves” would bring greater results than “trotting out every week a new strategy” for ending the war.

■ There is no lack of contact 1 with North Vietnam, he said, i Third parties with diplomatic , access to both sides in the i war were holding “continual discussions,” he said. t Senator Fulbright said he - would like to see a “new ! approach” to the Vietnam ; problem. But, in reply to r questions, he said there probably would be no changes in

policy as long as the Secretary of State, Mr Dean Rusk, the Defence Secretary, Mr Robert McNamara, and .the Presidential Adviser, Mr Walt W. Rostow, were President Johnson’s brain trust in foreign affairs. The President, he said, “would not be quite as difficult” in reaching a compromise on Vietnam as Mr Rusk. Senator George McGovern, a Democrat, estimated that it would “take a million men to pacify” South Vietnam militarily. “Our effort there is out of all proportion to our national interest," he said, also in a television interview. Senator McGovern said “our excessive fear of communism caused us to rush into Vietnam by ourselves and today we find ourselves standing virtually alone.” (Marshal Ky’s View, Page 14.)