Contributions To War Criticised

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32381, 21 August 1970, Page 17

Contributions To War Criticised

SHARON (Massachussetts), August 17. Senator Edward Kennedy denounced tonight United States involvement in the Vietnam war and said that the lack of commitment to it by other South-East Asian countries showed they did not consider it a major threat to peace.

Addressing a meeting oi some 400 constituents, Senator Kennedy questioned whj countries such as Australia New Zealand, Thailand, Indo nesia and the PMllipines were not committed as heavily to the war as was America. “Why is it that Indonesian young men are not sent to Vietnam to fight and die, or the Filipinos—with the exceptions of certain medical units’” he asked. “Why haven't we got a greater kind of commitment from Australia and New Zealand’” the Senator asked. “Or the Thais’ Why is it necessary for us to spend some s4om in economic aid to get them to send troops to Cambodia?” Senator Kennedy said that if these countries believed the Vietnam war was such a threat to the security of freedom - loving countries throughout South-East Asia, then they themselves would provide all the resources. “I wonder why it is that the other countries of South-East Asia are not prepared to make a kind of commitment r— —

>f ia terms of men and resources that the United States is v continuing to make,” he said. iy “I think that these couns. tries themselves would be > prepared to provide the men ■e and resources to do the job if there was a threat to free- ° dom in South-East Asia by Communist imperialism.” ° Senator Kennedy proposed ° that the United States withrr draw its commitment to the Vietnam War and use its reu sources for “critical kinds of domestic needs” in the fields ’ of education, health, rebuiid--1 ing of cities and depollution h of the air.