‘Shoot Down Red Cross

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31762, 20 August 1968, Page 13

‘Shoot Down Red Cross

Aircraft’

LAGOS, Aug. 19.

A Nigerian Govern-ment-owned newspaper yesterday called on Federal authorities to shoot down Red Cross aircraft carrying relief supplies to Biafra, N.Z.P.A.-Reuter reported.

In a front page editorial headed “Gratuitous insult to Nigeria,” the “Sunday Post” said it took strong exception to the Red Cross’s declared intention to assume responsibility for taking steps to deliver urgent relief material to Biafra.

Accusing the Red Cross of being engaged in clandestine illegal flights, it said: “We therefore call on the Federal Military Government not to take this challenge to its authority lying down. “It must prove it is the only competent authority in this country ■ by answering back the International Red Cross organisation in the only language it can understand. And that is by shooting down their planes.” Relations between the Red Cross and the Government have been precarious for several weeks, but they deteriorated last week when Dr August Lindt, the Red Cross committee’s relief co-ordinator for Nigeria, announced in Geneva a “Biafran proposal” fbr relief to be flown to a neutralised airstrip on secessionist territory. The Government was incensed at the statement because the proposal, it said, was Biafran, and the Red Cross had made its plans public without consulting the Federal side. The morning after the Geneva announcement, a Nigerian Federal Government official said that the Red Cross had been told two months ago: “Stop coming to us with proposals. Go to the rebels and find out if they agree, and then come to us.” ' But two weeks ago, Dr

Lindt had still not been able to tell the Government what the Biafran stand was, the official said. The official said all kinds of problems were still not solved, such as where flights would start and how many there would be. He asked: “How can we have military operations with planes flying all over the place? What sort of nonsense is that?”

Soon afterwards, Nigeria officially rejected the proposal for a neutralised airstrip. In Addis Ababa the deadlocked peace talks to end the war remained in a state of

suspended animation as the fourth consecutive day without a meeting passed, the Associated Press reported. The leader of the Nigerian delegation said yesterday, shortly after four of his nineman team left for Lagos, that they would be back sometime next week after consultations and denied that the talks were breaking down. In the two weeks since the opposing delegations arrived in Addis Ababa they have met for less than 11 hours, and made it clear that they had found no room for compromise on ways of bringing about either a cease-fire or a negotiated peace.