SAIGON FEARS KENNEDY WIN

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31660, 22 April 1968, Page 11

SAIGON FEARS KENNEDY WIN

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) SAIGON, April 20. South Vietnam’s Foreign Minister, Tran Van Do, said today that the people of South Vietnam were very afraid that Senator Robert Kennedy will be elected President of the United States, United Press International reported. “They are afraid because Senator Kennedy proposed a coalition government,” the Minister said in an interview. He said many South Vietnamese were suspicious of the United States and afraid the Americans “will sell us out.” Tran Van Do echoed pre-

vious statements by President Nguyen Van Thieu, who has criticised Mr Kennedy, his brother, Edward Kennedy, and Senator William Fulbright for their opposition to Johnson administration policy in Vietnam. He said a peace agreement based on a coalition government with the Communists would amount to “a camouflaged surrender.” The Foreign Minister said he had received favourable replies from two of South Vietnam’s allies—the Philippines and Thailand—to his Government’s proposal for a summit conference to discuss common policy toward negotiations. He said he had not yet received replies from the other four allied countries—the United States, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea.

In Los Angeles, Senator Kennedy said that if the United States Government had promised it would go anywhere any time to negotiate peace in Vietnam it should keep its word. Senator Kennedy told a questioner at an election campaign luncheon that the United States had three courses open to it in Vietnam. One was a unilateral withdrawal —“and I am opposed to that.” The second was to escalate the war, which would lead to a greater number of deaths.

The third was to start negotiations. “We can try and if we are not successful we can go back to killing one another.” Senator Kennedy said mounting American and declining South Vietnamese casualties showed clearly that the Vietnamese population were increasingly regarding the war as an American or "white man’s" war. United States - casualties last year were double those of 1966, while South Vietnamese casualties “were less than ours,” he said.