White House talks for S.E. Asia leaders

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33816, 12 April 1975, Page 2

White House talks for S.E. Asia leaders

(From BRUCE KOHN. N.Z.P.A. staff correspondent.)

WASHINGTON, April 11. President Gerald Ford last night upgraded the significance of the approaching Anzus council meeting and his summit discussions with New Zealand and Australia.

In his speech to Congress he linked his meetings with the New Zealand Prime Minister (Mr Rowling) and the Prime Minister of Australia (Mr Gough VVhitlam) to American efforts to ease disquiet about tthe implicating for American policies of the military debacles taking place in Indo-China.

And additionally he revealed that the Singapore Prime Minister (Mr Lee Kwan Yew) a recent visitor to both New Zealand and Australia, would be having talks at the White House, as well as President Suharto, of Indonesia. The list of visitors for early next month, coupled with the holding of the Anzus council meeting late this month, underlined that the search for new policies to be followed in the SouthEast Asian region is about to be given high priority.

It is evident, however, that within the Ford Administration concern exists that

the Secretary of State (Dr Henry Kissinger) has little time for America’s relations with New Zealand and Australia and insufficient time to devote to a thorough reexamination of where America goes from here in SouthEast Asia.

Officials had hoped he would attend the Anzus meetings. But they said today that chances he would do so were slim. Dr Kissinger is known to refer to Mr Whitlam as “Goof” Whitlam and to be impatient with the policies followed by the Labour Government in Canberra since it first came to power.

He is said by United States officials who know him well to be pre-occunied with his role as a Middle East peacemaker. They say it is difficult to pry him loose from Middle-East problems to get extended study of suggestions covering fresh policies for South-East Asia.

It was noted fast night that President Ford made long comments on the importance the United States attached to its relationships with Japan. Yet earlier in the day the Secretary of State had failed to keep a luncheon date with the

Japanese Foreign Minister (Kiichi Miyazawa), whose worried Government had sent him to Washington to seek reassurances that America would stand by its security treaty arrangements with Tokyo.