Spy flights over Vietnam reported

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33741, 14 January 1975, Page 13

Spy flights over Vietnam reported

M.Z.P.A.-Eeutet— Copyright)

NEW YORK, January 13.

The United States, violating a secret two-year-old agreement, has been flying reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam for some time, “New York Times” quoted a Government source as saying. The paper quoted the Pentagon source as saying the flights violated a secret understanding between the United States and North Vietnam, made at the time of the Vietnam cease-fire agreement in January. 1973. The source was identified only as an authoritative official of the Defence Department.

The “New York Times” quoted him as saying “we only started the reconnaissance in North Vietnam after we repeatedly warned them about their violations of the 1973 cease-fire accords, particularly in bringing down new men and supplies into South Vietnam.”

A Defence Department spokesman declined comment on the flights, the “New York Times” said. But it added that the spokesman confirmed that unarmed American aircraft were carrying out reconnaissance over South Vietnam and Cambodia. Government aircraft continued to pound Communist positions in .an attempt to relieve pressure around a district town east-north-east of Saigon, military sources said in Saigon today.

The sources said that another 43 Communist troops were killed yesterday in six hours of air attacks, bringing the reported number of Communist casualties to 327 dead in fighting in the last three days.

South Vietnamese troops lifted a month-long Communist siege of the district capital of Hoai Due yesterday, with an air-supported attack that ended in hand-to-hand fighting.

As a 1000-man South Vietnamese force moved through the Communist cordon on the combat-levelled town, 60 miles north of Saigon, Government jet fighter-bombers dumped bombs to their rear to prevent attacks from the exposed flank, military sources said. Military sources in Vietnam said that they thought J the Communist threat to Hoai Due had ended when

the relief forces fought their way into the town yesterday. Field officers said the key battle began late on Saturday and ended yesterday morning at a small hill overlooking Hoai Due and less than a mile from the district town. They said that Government troops took the hill in hand-to-hand fighting. They said most of the 20.000 residents had fled, and the town was “absolutely flattened” by the month-long battle that began on December 14. Late last month, Communist forces fought their way into the Hoai Due market, but were unable to overrun the 500 defenders holed up at the district headquarters in a huge underground bunker. Meanwhile, about 100 people demonstrated again this morning, in a continuing series of governmentsponsored protests, in front of the Saigon headquarters of the four-nation International Commission of Control and Supervision. They carried banners denouncing the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong attacks, and the capture last week of Phuoc Binh city, capital of Phuoc Long province, 75 miles north of Saigon. They presented a petition to the I.C.C.S. Another 120 troops, police an civilians from fallen Phuoc Long province have made their way to neighbouring Quang Due province, bringing the total to over 700, according to military sources. Some 26,000 civilians and more than 2000 Government troops were reported to have been trapped in Phuoc Binh, Long’s capital, Phuoc Binh, before its fall last week. General David Jones, United States Air Force Chief of Staff, left Bangkok today by air for an undisclosed destination. He had flown to Saigon on Saturday and had talks with President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam during a six-hour visit.

In Bangkok, he had talks with the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Air Force, Air Chief Marshal Kamol Dechatunka.