RUSK ISSUES WARNING TO DEMOCRATS ON MANIFESTO

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31764, 22 August 1968, Page 15

RUSK ISSUES WARNING TO DEMOCRATS ON MANIFESTO

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) WASHINGTON, August 21.

The American Secretary of State (Mr Dean Rusk) has warned the Democratic Party against drawing up a Presidential election manifesto which involves itself with the United States-North Vietnamese peace negotiations in Paris. Testifying last night before the party’s platform committee, Mr Rusk said: “It would be neither wise nor practicable, in a political platform designed to serve for the next four years, to detail the shape and content of the agreement we would hope to see emerge from the negotiations with Hanot “And I think it even less wise or practicable to try to set forth in that pitform the bargaining strategy we would like our negotiators to employ. “What should be made clear above all, it seems to me, is that our purpose in Vietnam is an early, but honourable peace that will enable the free peoples of Asia to live together in freedom.” The “dove” candidates. Senators Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, are demanding that the party’s election manifesto should include calls for an immediate halt of the bombing of North Vietnam and the inclusion of Communists in a coalition government in Saigon.

Talking to reporters shortly before Mr Rusk spoke to the committee, Senator McCarthy, who did not himself testify, was asked whether the Secretary of State should have accepted the committee’s rel quest to appear. “I don’t really think he should,” Senator McCarthy replied, “especially since VicePresident Humphrey has said he would not have him as Secretary of State. It’s like a voice out of the past.”

Senator McCarthy added that he expected his supporters on the platform group of 110 officials, and critics of the Administration, would produce “a dissenting Vietnam plank and fight for it on the floor of the party’s nomin-

ating convention in Chicago next week.

Vice-President Humphrey’s campaign organisers, characterising the McCarthy claims as “grotesque in the extreme,” said later that their estimates showed the VicePresident would move swiftly to early nomination with a minimum of 100 votes more than the 1312 required for victory.

But Mr Patrick Lucey, campaign director for Senator McCarthy announced that Vice-President Humphrey had

no more than 820 delegates’ voets, compared with the senator’s strength of "something in excess of 600 first ballots.” He assessed Senator George McGovern’s committed votes at “about 35.” Mr Lucey told reporters:

“We are finding increasing support for Senator McCar-

thy’s nomination among delegates, and considerable softening for Humphrey.” Senator McCarthy’s attempt to wrest more delegate seats at today’s credentials committee hearings was concentrated on the Washington, Pennsylvania and Connecticut delegations, on the ground that his supporters had been “de-

prived of fair representation.” In Washington, it was claimed, disputed ballots had been burned.