Orderly protest at Mt John

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32862, 10 March 1972, Page 1

Orderly protest at Mt John

There will be no “battle of words” between the commander of the Mt John, Lake Tekapo, satellite-tracking station and protesters at the camera installation on Sunday, according to a Press Association message from Timaru.

Major C. M. Charles, commander of the United States Air Force Baker-Nunn base, said yesterday that while the demonstrators were making their speeches at the summit of Mount John, he and Lieutenant-Colonel P. KWilkinson, air attache to the United States Embassy in Wellington, would remain inside the camera station. Major Charles said he had no intention of going out in front of a crowd of demonstrators to participate m what could become a “slanging match.”

However, the group would 1 be invited to send representa- ■ tives to inspect the installa--1 tioh. ; Colonel Wilkinson, who ■ arrived at the Washdyke I headquarters of the base on ■ Wednesday, said he became 1 involved whenever American bases in New Zealand were opened for inspection. The protest would be an ■ orderly one, said speakers for the organisers in a press conference at the University of Canterbury yesterday. They said that two of the organisers had been taken on a tour by the head of the police in Timaru. He had told them that if any demonstrator went inside the boundaries of the administrative headquarters of the project at Washdyke that person would be trespassing. Mr M. Horton, one of the organisers, said that ropes would be put round the I boundary of the two-acre I site leased by the U.S.A.F. I for the tracking station at Mount John. I A large party of police I would be present at the I demonstration there.