S.E.A.T.O. “rolls up” its military plans

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33454, 8 February 1974, Page 2

S.E.A.T.O. “rolls up” its military plans

2 (.V.Z.P .A, Stuff Correspondent • BANGKOK. February 7. o I'he South-East Asia Treaty Organisation, once denounced ■ by Peking as a “paper tiger,” has closed its military planning ) office at its headquarters in Bangkok.

The military plans, worked on since 1954, have been rolled up. Military planning actually . stopped on September 28 i last year when New Zealand and other S.E.A.T.O. Council members meeting in New York agreed to reduce the I organisation’s military activij ties and put greater emphasis | on internal security and development programmes of the two regional members, Thailand and the Philippines. FUTURE ACTIVITIES ; The top-secret military i plans have been pigeon-holed I but planning of exercises, which will include more seminars, is still going on. i “The exercises will be purely to test the capability J of our member forces, rather than to test actual military plans, as in the past,” a

S.E.A.T.O. spokesman told (N.Z.P.A. ' The plans were made to .“deal with” China, North Vietnam and North Korea. “S.E.A.T.O. has never had ! any standing forces, and the military planning it has done ■ ; is, given the changed rela'tionships among the Great ’Powers, has been largely irrelevant to the situation in ' South-East Asia,” the Prime Minister (Mr Kirk) told dele-' Agates to the R.S.A. confer-, • ence in Wellington last year. The S.E.A.T.O. military planning office quietly died> -i at the end of last week with--1 out any fanfare. Its demise coincided with qthe visit of the Australian I Prime Minister (Mr Gough ii Whitlam), a sharp critic of z’the John Foster Dulles conricept of S.E.A.T.O. as an alli- / ance designed to "contain” i 1 China. “BOTH SATISFIED” S.E.A.T.O. officials dropped | plans to hold a press con-i ference because it would] (have clashed with Mr Whit-I lam’s own press conference.’ r! Mr Whitlam said that the I views and principles exr pressed in the Manila Treaty,] which set up 5.E.A.T.0., were; 5 still valid because they! .emphasised economic de-; and social justice.] 5; This is where the emphaeisis will be in the “new”’ JS.E.A.T.O. Mr Whitlam said.

that both New Zealand and] Australia were satisfied with] the new arrangements. ] Both countries had been: expected to leave the organisation after the election of Labour governments, but Mr Kirk and Mr Whitlam have made it clear that they ac-i cept the argument that] S.E.A.T.O. is still important’ to Thailand, providing as it] does Thailand’s only formal, defence guarantee by the United States. OTHER CLOSINGS

When it closed the mili-] tary planning office lastweek, S.E.A.T.O. also closed; its public information officeand its research office. ] The organisation — which links New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, France, the United States, and Britain — is now being run by four offices: the offices of development affairs, security affairs, administration, and the office; of the secretary-general.