HOUSE DEBATE ENDS

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32120, 16 October 1969, Page 13

HOUSE DEBATE ENDS

(N.Z PA.-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, Oct. 15. The House of Representatives held a wideranging debate on the Vietnam war in an unusual night session leading up to Moratorium Day, but the critics were thwarted in their attempt to keep the session going all night.

Supporters of the Nixon Administration succeeded at their fourth attempt in cutting short the- planned allnight session by pushing through a motion to adjourn at 11.16 p.m. The halt came on a vote of 112 to 110 after two hours of unusually well-attended debate, during which “dovish” members of the House strongly criticised American involvement in the war and the Saigon Government, called for a speedy withdrawal of American troops, and even urged the recall of the American Ambassador to Saigon. The group of “doves,” who organised the session as a starter to today’s moratorium, had expected to deliver a series of set speeches with interjections by sympathetic colleagues. However, the session turned into a major debate when Republican leaders and backbenchers rose to defend the Nixon Administration before the crowded public galleries. The organisers had conceded that they would probably fail in their efforts to continue the session until noon when the House normally meets for its regular business.

After the session broke up about 500 people, mainly young moratorium supporters, assembled on the steps of the Capitol building, singing peace songs and chanting antiwar slogans such as “we want peace now.” There were no incidents reported. Mr Andrew Jacobs, (Democrat, Indiana), who helped organise the House session, said afterwards: “The most significant thing was that the House of Representatives showed you can discuss change within the system.” The worry of possible; violence during today’s antiwar demonstrations clearly concerned those congressmen who took part in last night’s debate.

Mr Jacobs, aged 37, said in opening the special session: “I say to my moratorium friends: don’t blow it” Mr Ogden Reid, a liberal New York Republican who supports the day of protest said: “The moratorium is an effort to take the anti-Viet-nam war sentiment out of the hands of the radicals.”

Mr Jacobs began a brief display of heat when he said that Hanoi would respond to American requests for release of American prisoners of war if the United States ended its support of the present Saigon Government. Mr Gerald Ford, of Michigan, the Republican House Leader, angrily replied: “I think the gentlemen is languishing in a fool’s paradise because there is not a scintilla of evidence that they (Hanoi), would give us anything.” Many of the arguments that followed had been aired before in individual speeches and in the Senate—but never before in such a concentrated give-and-take session in the 435-member House.