Debate Wanted On Involvement

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31504, 19 October 1967, Page 28

Debate Wanted On Involvement

(Net* Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, October 18.

The whole question of New Zealand’s military involvement in Vietnam should be seriously and fully debated in Parliament, the national liaison committee for Committees on Vietnam said today.

In a statement the national committee said once again New Zealand troops were being sent without any Parliamentary debate, thus circumventing “that very democratic process we are supposedly encouraging in Vietnam.”

It went on: “A short history of our Involvement in the Vietnam war demonstrates a complete lack of any show of independence on the part of our Government. “It is rather hollow logic to talk in terms of any commitment to S.E.A.T.O. when several important member nations—namely France, Pakistan and Britain—refuse to participate in this war,” says the committee. “The interests of a major power such as the United States can never be identical

with our own interests. We are missing opportunities for an independent foreign policy which would support the aims of the United Nations and wond peace interests rather than the political interests of the United States. “Mr Johnson’s defence policy, endorsed in the latest poll by only 34 per cent of the American public, should not be New Zealand defence policy,” the committee said