"Vietnam war won”

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32967, 13 July 1972, Page 3

"Vietnam war won”

CN’.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, July 12.

The Vietnam war was as good as over,

said an assistant director of the United States Information Agency (Mr K. Crane) in Wellington yesterday.

Mr Crane, who arrived in New Zealand on Monday for a familiarisation trip, said of the wan “It’s over. We’ve won. The North Vietnamese are going to negotiate. I’m

sure, because there is nothing else they can do now.” The North Vietnamese had made serious miscalculations in their invasion of the South which had ended in a military disaster from which the North would not recover. “They clearly expected the A.R.V.N. (the South Vietnamese Army) not to fight and the conditioned population to welcome them with flowers and banners,” Mr Crane said. “At An Loc, captured documents and prisoners told us they expected a completely different response from what they got. The first tanks into An Loc had open turrets with the men standing up waiting

for the welcome. They were wiped.” Mr Crane said that in the United States, Vietnam was a dead issue. The protests were over.

A recent public opinion survey in the United States showed that seven out of 10 of the American public supported President Nixon’s strong intervention. “The North Vietnamese invasion of the South brought a real swing in American opinion,” he said. , Mr Crane this morning left Wellington for Christchurch to go hunting in the South Island. He will leave New Zealand on July 17.