POSSIBLE RISE IN U.S. FORCES

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31628, 14 March 1968, Page 13

POSSIBLE RISE IN U.S. FORCES

Senators Call For Full Consultation

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright)

WASHINGTON, March 13.

Senate pressure on President Johnson for full consultation is expected to increase as he considers whether to order a build-up of up to 206,000 more American troops in Vietnam, according to diplomatic observers in Washington.

After two days of televised Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings, critics of the war policy have given the Administration notice that they want to be kept fully in the picture.

The President and top Administration officials are still conducting their “A-to-Z” review of the entire Vietnam strategy and policy, with no sign of any imminent announcements.

The Secretary of State (Mr Dean Rusk), the reluctant “star” of the television marathon, has publicly insisted that no specific recommendation for a massive troop boost has been submitted to Mr Johnson, but reports that the Joint Chiefs of Staff are in favour of an increase of up to 206,000 men have persisted without any official denial, and the inquiring senators frequently mention this figure.

The committee’s chairman (Senator J. Fulbright, Democrat, Arkansas), who led the demand for adequate consultation, was backed up by all but two or three of the 19 members of the committee.

Mr Rusk, who parried their questions for 10| hours during the two-day hearings, agreed to return to a closed session where he could go more deeply into what the Administration might have in mind.

No date for this closed meeting was set The Secretary of State, however, side-stepped giving the Senators any commitment that Congress would have a formal voice before a new troop build-up was decided on. Observers say that, at best, Mr Rusk’s promise was simply to discuss future Vietnam matters in private with committee members. Senator Fulbright said this failed to satisfy him. “He never did answer us on whether there would be consultation before a decision is made,” Senator Fulbright told reporters after today’s session. “He did not say positively he would, and he did not say positively he wouldn’t”

Asked whether the long testimony by Mr Rusk had altered Senator Fulbright’s stand against the Administration’s policies, the senator replied: “It confirmed my worst fears. If television did its work, several million minds may have been changed.”

As the committee wound up its public hearing, House of Representatives members were also calling for consultations.

Congressman Paul Findley (Republican, Illinois) announced that more than 100 members of the House had agreed to support a resolution calling for an immediate review of America’s basic policies in South-East Asia. There was, he said, strong, substantial and bi-partisan feeling that no decisions on committing further large numbers of troops, or on other fundamental Vietnam war moves, should be made until Congress was consulted. In his final statement to the committee, Mr Rusk said he could offer no hope at present that Hanoi was interested in a peaceful settlement of the war.

“The problem with arranging peace talks ; that no-one in the world has been able

to tell us that Hanoi will hold her hand in any respect militarily if we stop the bombing,” he said. Senator Thomas Dodd (Democrat, Connecticut), who said he was in complete agreement with Mr Rusk, said he hoped the hearings had not created the impression that the committee had been “muzzled or curbed or somehow restricted.”

During his public testimony before a battery of six live television cameras, 25 newsreel cameras and 150 reporters and photographers, Mr Rusk found few supporters,

some outright hostility, and many committee members plagued by agonising doubts as to whether the United States had any hope of achieving its objectives in South-East Asia. The White House took no official notice of the hearings, but President Johnson had m-de his feelings plain during the swearing-in ceremony, when he said the nation had the strength to deal with any foe “except within our own boundaries.” Americans, he said, should stop wasting their strength “by chewing on ourselves.” In London yesterday, the British Prime Minister (Mr Harold Wilson) said that British dissociation from America’s Vietnam policy would not help to bring peace. Mr Wilson, who has been under pressure from Leftwing members of his Labour Party to drop support for the American stand, told his critics in the House of Commons: “I am in no doubt at all that, as Western co-chair-man of the 1954 Geneva Peace Conference on IndoChina, the relations we have had with the United States has had very considerable effect.” Russia is the other conference co-chairman. Mr Wilson said he did not mind the British people demonstrating against the war, “provided those who demonstrate genuinely want peace in Vietnam and not military victory for one side or the other.”