Nixon reassures critics

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32838, 11 February 1972, Page 9

Nixon reassures critics

f N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) , WASHINGTON, February 10. President Nixon yesterday stepped into a major election-year row by trying to soothe outraged Democratic Presidential hopefuls who feel their criticisms of his course in Vietnam have been portrayed by a top White House aide as treason.

The President gave his political opponents a personal assurance that he did not question the patriotism or sincerity of those who disagreed with him, although he urged Presidential candidates to choose their words with care so that Hanoi would not have an incentive to prolong the war. His remarks, in a radio address amplifying a foreign policy report he sent to Congress. were widely viewed as an implicit rejection of a statement by Mr H. R. Haldeman, the White House chief of staff, that critics of

war policy “are consciously aiding and abetting the enemy of the United States.”

Mr Haldeman, a 44-year-old former advertising executive, who spoke in a televised interview last Monday, was accused by Democratic Presidential candidates of making an accusation tantamount to treason. His targets appeared to be Senators Edmund Muskie of Maine, and George McGovern, of South Dakota, who have objected to the President’s recent eight-point Vietnam peace plan and called for new proposals as a basis for negotiating the end of the war.