U.S. Condemns Hanoi Parade

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31365, 10 May 1967, Page 19

U.S. Condemns Hanoi Parade

(N.Z.P.A .-Reuter—Copyright;

WASHINGTON, May 9. The United States State Department accused North Vietnam yesterday of committing a flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention by parading several captured American pilots through the streets of Hanoi on Saturday.

It announced that ft had sent a protest to North Vietnam through the international committee of the Red Cross in Geneva.

The State Department spokesman said: “We are concerned at reports that United States prisoners of North Vietnam were paraded through the streets of Hanoi on May 6 and put on display at a press conference. “These actions by the North Vietnamese authorities are a flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention of Prisoners of War.”

The spokesman said that the North Vietnamese “didn't seem to give a damn-all about their obligations” under the convention. He said the United States viewed the week-end incident as especially disturbing in light of indications that one or more of the pilots had been wounded. “We have repeatedly called on the North Vietnamese authorities to live up to and honour their responsibilities under the Geneva Convention, to which they adhered in 1957.”

Asked if North Vietnam appeared to be paving the way for the trial of American pilots as war criminals, the

spokesman said he had seen nothing to indicate that recently. Hanoi threatened to hold war crimes trials for other American prisoners last year but so far it has not gone ahead with them.