Vietnam Talks Tn Pacific’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31316, 11 March 1967, Page 13

Vietnam Talks Tn Pacific’

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

WASHINGTON, March 10.

President Johnson is shaping plans for a new top-level conference on Vietnam to be held somewhere in the Pacific possibly later this month.

The general opinion was that he would fly to Honolulu, but officials refused to say exactly' when —or whether Allied leaders, such as the South Vietnamese Prime Minister, Air Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky, would attend the

meeting. The President himself revealed that a Vietnam conference was imminent, while answering questions at the White House yesterday. Mr Johnson said that he expected to meet Mr Henry Cabot Lodge, the United States Ambassador in Saigon, and General William Westmoreland, the United States commander in Vietnam, “in

the Pacific area, perhaps some time this month.” News of the proposed meeting overshadowed talk of a bitter split between Mr Johnson and Senator Robert Kennedy and others on the issue of stopping the American bombing of North Vietnam to try and bring Hanoi to the

conference table. Mr Johnson dealt softly with his critics and suggested that they did not have the information which was available to him. Not even the charge by Mr Arthur Schlesinger, one of Senator Kennedy’s supporters, that the Administration did not want to start peace negotiations at present, could bring a reaction from Mr Johnson.