The Johnson Administration decided today upon an increase in men, money, and equipment for South Vietnam to offset the growing strength of the Việt Cộng insurgents and to increase the pressure upon North Vietnam for a diplomatic settlement. Among the steps agreed upon by President Johnson and his advisers were the following:
- Assignment of several thousand additional troops to South Vietnam to train the South Vietnamese forces and to protect key American installations against attacks by Communist guerrillas. There are 27,500 American servicemen in South Vietnam now, nearly twice the number there a year ago.
- Continued American air strikes against North Vietnam, probably of greater intensity and farther north than the bombing raids of the last two months.
- With American assistance, a 160,000-man increase in the size of the South Vietnamese military, militia and police forces, which now number about 557,000 men.
- Increased economic assistance to strengthen the position of the South Vietnamese Government, particularly in the rural provinces where the Việt Cộng have been making heavy inroads.
These steps were agreed upon by President Johnson at a meeting of the National Security Council with Maxwell D. Taylor, the United States Ambassador to Saigon. Ambassador Taylor, who has been conferring with Administration officials in Washington for the last week, will leave for Saigon tomorrow evening. It was evident that he was leaving with Administration endorsement of almost all the proposals that he brought to Washington for improving the war effort against the Communists. As Ambassador Taylor noted after a Congressional hearing, the new steps do not represent a “fundamental change in strategy” and are “not sensational In nature.”
Basically, the new steps represent a further implementation of the strategy adopted by the Administration after Mr. Taylor’s previous visit in December. This strategy called for increasing the size of the South Vietnamese Army to match the growing power and effectiveness of the Việt Cộng forces as well as air strikes against the North to persuade the Hanoi regime to stop its support of the insurgents and to seek a negotiated settlement.
Administration leaders realize that the strategy of a step-up, particularly where intensified air raids in the north are concerned, carries with it the threat of open intervention by North Vietnam or Communist China. At a news conference called by the President after the National Security Council meeting, Ambassador Taylor said the chances of intervention by the Chinese or North Vietnamese were “very slight at the present time.” From Congressional sources, however, it was apparent that this threat has begun to weigh heavily on the Administration’s thinking to the point that it has developed “contingency planning” as to how many American troops would be needed in the event of Chinese intervention.
United States officials have urged South Vietnamese authorities to tighten security throughout Saigon instead of greatly increasing guards around United States offices. Informed sources said, however, that Vietnamese officials in the capital would probably place a cordon at some main streets around American offices and add to the permanent police patrols.
Elsewhere in South Vietnam, the stepped-up military activity of the last three days was reflected in casualty figures made public today. A United States Army officer and two enlisted men were killed yesterday in an operation in Hậu Nghĩa Province that had previously taken the life of an American helicopter gunner. Six American soldiers were wounded in the action, initiated by government troops, 20 miles west of Saigon. Five Vietnamese soldiers were killed and 20 wounded. There was no report on Việt Cộng casualties.
In Saigon American representatives had been reluctant before the terrorist bombing of the United States Embassy on Tuesday to ask for the diversion of any large number of policemen from their regular duties to protect American offices. Since the terrorist bombing the Americans have particularly encouraged the Vietnamese to tighten their roadblocks and checkpoints around the city.
Although the American mission here had not asked for major protection at existing offices, officials for years have sought funds for a new building. Plans for a chancery on land already owned by the United States were drawn up four years ago. When Maxwell D. Taylor was appointed Ambassador last July, he unsuccessfully renewed the request that Washington provide funds for the construction. It is estimated that a new building could be completed in a year if authorization is now given by Congress.
In Hậu Nghĩa Province the military operation continued today. Twenty-two helicopters had been used to carry Vietnamese troops to the area because of intelligence reports that two Việt Cộng companies, more than 200 men, were active there. More government troops were being flown in by helicopter.
In Quảng Tín Province, about 25 miles south of the Đà Nẵng air base, an operation that began Wednesday appeared to have ended. South Vietnamese Government sources put the number of Việt Cộng killed during the three days of strenuous fighting at 300. American officials still could not confirm the figure but said preliminary reports indicated it might be accurate. The government losses were 32 killed, 104 wounded and 20 men missing with their weapons. Two United States advisers were killed and 17 wounded.
Prime Minister Chou En-lai (Zhou Enlai) of the People’s Republic of China met with Pakistan’s President, Mohammed Ayub Khan, and presented a four-point statement on the Vietnam War to forward to U.S. President Johnson, in that the U.S. and Communist China had no diplomatic relations. Via Khan, Chou informed Johnson that his nation would not provoke a war with the United States, but an American ground invasion of North Vietnam would risk war with China. Chou added that China was ready to provide aid to “any country opposing U.S. aggression”; and that China was prepared to use nuclear weapons to defend its territory. “Once the war breaks out,” the statement concluded, “it will have no boundaries.”
Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson of Canada suggested that a pause in the air strikes against North Vietnam might lead to breaking the stalemate in the Vietnam conflict.
President de Gaulle and Prime Minister Harold Wilson made some progress today toward a clearer understanding of each other’s policies, although they remain deeply divided over the United States’ conduct of the war in Vietnam. But even in this hotly disputed field, British officials noted some progress in the first two days of talks between the British Prime Minister and the French President. There was agreement that “some sort of basis must be found for a peaceful settlement,” the officials said. This was interpreted as French support for a request for views on the future of Southeast Asia circulated to interested nations today by the British Foreign Secretary, Michael Stewart. The object of Mr. Wilson’s visit, as the British explained it, is to clear away French misconceptions of Britain’s economic position and foreign policies.
This is the first visit to Paris by a British Prime Minister since Harold Macmillan’s ill-fated journey in December, 1962. On that occasion he and General de Gaulle quarreled over nuclear cooperation with the United States. A month later President de Gaulle vetoed Britain’s bid to enter the European Common Market. French-British relations have been frosty ever since. Both sides said the keynote of today’s talks had been friendly candor, Mr. Wilson, replying to a toast offered by President de Gaulle at luncheon, reported that on substantive matters the discussion had been “frank, outspoken, robust and constructive.” This might “pave the way toward a more cordial relationship than that of the last few years,” the Prime Minister suggested.
The Soviet Union’s leaders are likely to ignore President Johnson’s latest invitation to visit the United States. A Soviet Government spokesman declined today to comment on the invitation, and Izvestia, the government newspaper, did not report the remarks the President made yesterday at a White House news conference. But informed sources said there was no chance that the Soviet leaders would agree to an exchange of visits so long as the crisis over Vietnam was not settled. Mr. Johnson extended his first invitation to the Soviet leaders at the beginning of the year. Three weeks later the government-controlled Soviet press showed interest in it.
Immediately afterward, however, the war in Vietnam was stepped up with the first American air strike against the North, and the idea of an exchange of Soviet-American visits was shelved as far as Moscow was concerned. Yesterday the President said his original invitation still stood. He said he would be “very happy” if the Soviet leaders visited Washington. But the Soviet leaders are said to be determined to avoid any move that could be interpreted by the Communist regimes of Asia as appeasement of the United States as long as no peaceful Vietnam settlement is in sight. Premier Aleksei M. Kosygin and Leonid I. Brezhnev, First Secretary of the Communist party, have warned in formal statements that United States actions in Vietnam are a stumbling block to improved relations between the two countries.
Communist East Germany, with apparent Soviet backing, has begun a program of anticipatory reprisals against a scheduled meeting of the West German Parliament in West Berlin next week. Control authorities on the highways linking the former German capital with the West have imposed a slowdown on civilian motor traffic and are denying passage to members of the Parliament. A.D.N, the official East German press agency, announced tonight that Soviet and East German troops would conduct maneuvers “west of Berlin” between April 5 and 11.
The Bundestag, or lower house of the West German Parliament, has scheduled a plenary session in West Berlin next Wednesday — the first such sitting in the former capital in seven years. The A.D.N. announcement gave few details of the planned maneuvers. It said their purpose was to test cooperation between the Soviet and East German armies under simulated “severe combat conditions.” Senior officials from the countries of the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet bloc’s military alliance, will observe the maneuvers, the agency said. Allied observers considered it possible that the military exercise could become a pretext for temporarily cutting off surface access to West Berlin next week. The East German announcement gave no hint of this.
But East German official pronouncements and press commentaries have made it clear that the session of the Bundestag in Berlin is being regarded as a “provocation” requiring countermeasures. The anticipatory reprisals began last night with a slowdown in the processing of civilian traffic on the highways linking Hamburg and Helmstedt to West Berlin. Control officials on the interzonal highways to West Berlin delayed as long as five hours in processing vehicles today. The East German police at Helmstedt turned back the wife and secretary of a West German Deputy last night after having held them for seven hours.
U Thant, U.N. Secretary General, warned today that the attempt to resolve the Cyprus crisis might be wrecked, if Turkey persisted in rejecting efforts by the United Nations mediator. The Secretary General made public a letter in which Turkey accused the mediator, Galo Plaza Lasso of Ecuador, of having exceeded his authority in a report on Cyprus that he presented last week. The letter was received yesterday. Mr. Thant said that it was up to the Security Council to judge whether Mr. Plaza had complied with its resolution. “I feel bound to say that I have found nothing in the mediator’s report which I could consider as going beyond or being. in any other respect incompatible with the functions of the mediator as defined,” Mr. Thant said.
U.N. Secretary General U Thant has asked the help of Britain, the United States, Norway and Sweden for an emergency program to educate and train young South Africans. The program would nominally be open to South Africans of all races. Its obvious aim, however, is to benefit the blacks, Asians and other nonwhites whose opportunity for education is restricted under South Africa’s policy of apartheid, or racial separation. As a first step, Mr Thant called in representatives of the four governments today to outline the proposed program. Other governments will also be consulted as plans are developed.
Japan and South Korea signed draft agreements today on three major issues that for 14 years have hindered negotiations toward normal diplomatic relations between the two countries.
United States military transport planes began today an airlift of blankets and tents to Chile to help provide shelter for the 250,000 people left homeless by Sunday’s earthquake.
The British Labor Government has apparently made its painful decision to drop the TSR-2 fighter-bomber, which was to have been the pride of the Royal Air Force. Prime Minister Harold Wilson is expected to announce the news early next week in the House of Commons. probably on Monday. The great savings to the Government could then be reflected in the budget, which is to be published Tuesday. Britain has invested years of her best aircraft designers’ work in the TSR-2, a low-level attack plane with the most advanced electronic equipment. The equivalent of more than $700 million has already been spent on the project. All this has made the decision one of the toughest for Mr. Wilson in his six months in office. He nearly scrapped the TSR-2 two months ago but said then that further studies would have to be made of the plane and of its American rival, the F-111.
The annual private conference of the Bilderberg Group, composed of top bankers and politicians from North America and Europe, began at Villa d’Este, Italy. Because of the secrecy of the proceedings and the importance of the participants, critics of the Group suspect it of promoting a world government. The topics of the 1965 discussions were “Monetary cooperation in the Western world” and “The state of the Atlantic Alliance.”
The Pakistan High Commission lodged a protest with the Indian Government today, charging that 56 Muslims had been hastily evicted from the state of Assam in the last two months.
Agreement was reached today on a formula for a second means of application in the voting rights bill. It would provide an alternate judicial proceeding to widen the bill’s coverage. The formula was agreed on in a day-long meeting of Justice Department officials and lawyers on the staff of Senate leaders of both parties. The bill that President Johnson sent to Congress provides that the states and subdivisions to be covered are those with literacy tests where less than 50 percent of the voting age population was registered, or voted, in November, 1964.
The Attorney General, on his own motion or on complaint of discrimination by 20 persons, could ask the Civil Service Commission to appoint registrars to register voters in such states and subdivisions. As drawn, the bill would cover the Southern states of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, and 34 counties in North Carolina. Alaska would also be included, not because there is discrimination there, but because it has a literacy test and less than 50 percent of the eligible voters actually voted in 1964.
Senator Everett McKinley Kirksen of Illinois, the Republican leader, told the party’s annual women’s conference in Washington today that Republicans were taking charge of voting rights legislation and that the product would be constitutionally sound. The women applauded. They applauded yesterday when Barry Goldwater, the party’s 1964 Presidential candidate, contended that pending voting rights legislation was unconstitutional and unnecessary. Senator Dirksen did not explain what changes he had in mind or whether they were likely to meet Mr. Goldwater’s approval.
The first Blacks to serve on statewide committees administering Federal farm programs in Arkansas, Mississippi and Maryland were named today. The appointments were made by Secretary of Agriculture Orville L. Freeman in following up recommendations of the United States Civil Rights Commission. The commission had found widespread discrimination against Black farmers, particularly in Southern states, in the administration of such programs.
Mr. Freeman announced several other civil rights actions today. He ordered new elections in two Madison County, Miss., communities to elect farmer committeemen who participate in the local administration of farm programs. Blacks had made charges of discrimination and threats against Blacks in connection with the elections. The Secretary appointed a special three-member panel to review plans submitted by state extension services proposing voluntary steps to end practices that discriminate against Blacks. The committee will hold its first meeting next Tuesday. Mr. Freeman also appointed a citizens advisory committee to work with him in carrying out the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as it applies to the Department of Agriculture.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today urged the nation’s business community to immediately suspend all plant expansion and location in Alabama. He also called upon the Federal Government to “vigorously step up its enforcement of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.” The title provides for suspension of Federal funds in states where racial discrimination is prevalent. Both appeals were embodied in the first step of what Dr. King described as a three-stage blueprint of “escalated economic withdrawal.”
His Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s executive board, ending a two-day meeting here, endorsed the boycott unanimously, Dr. King said. The second and third stages of the plan, he said, will depend upon the “extent and nature of changes” that take place in Alabama in the next two weeks. Stage two would be an appeal to private institutions, churches and labor unions to examine their investment and pension funds to make certain they are not used to support “racism and brutality in Alabama.” This stage would also seek withdrawal of all Federal tax dollars deposited in Alabama banks.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, headed by Dr. Martin Luther King, expressed opposition to the House Un-American Activities Committee’s plans to investigate the Ku Klux Klan.
About 65 Blacks, most of them children, sang, swayed and sprawled in the street today three blocks from the Wilcox County Courthouse. The demonstration ended after about an hour. When newsmen began to drift away, the Blacks abruptly left. After a brief confrontation with Mayor Reg Albritton and Sheriff J. P. Jenkins, the Blacks lay down in the street, a main thoroughfare in this little town, leaving only one narrow lane for traffic. They said they were protesting the fact that Blacks must go to the old jail building for voter registration whereas whites go to the courthouse. There were only four adults in the group. Some of the others. were as young as 11 years old. Mayor Albritton, wearing a gas mask on his belt, had told the Blacks: “Where you register has no bearing. There’s no difference whether you register in the old jail, the new jail or a government building.”
The American Farm Bureau Federation opposed today the creation of a Federal department of housing and urban development.
Senators from California and Florida said they are ready to get tough in their effort to change the Labor Department stand against importation of farm workers. Senator Holland of Florida threatened to urge removal of Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz if necessary.
The U.S. Treasury Department is considering a graduated withholding proposal that would help relieve taxpayers’ agony in the future
Crooked deals and kickbacks were charged and denied as a Senate committee wound up its probe into the failure of a Marlin (Texas) bank.
The British Overseas Airways Corporation announced yesterday that it would build a $19.6-million passenger terminal at Kennedy International Airport. It will be the first terminal to be built in this country by a foreign carrier.
A musical adaptation of the John Reed book “Ten Days That Shook the World,” presented by Soviet theatrical producer Yuri Lyubimov, was performed for the first time, at the Taganka Theatre in Moscow. Loosely based on the events of the 1917 Revolution, Desyat” dnei, kotorye potryasli mir was billed as “a popular performance in two parts with mime, circus, buffoonery and shootings.”
Morocco won the five-nation African basketball championship tournament, authorized by FIBA, the Fédération Internationale de Basketball Amateur. Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Senegal, and Libya played at Tunis in a round robin format, with Morocco beating those teams, respectively, 70–57, 83–39, 59–44 and 79–45.
The stock market posted a modest advance, but still its best one in the last three weeks. Trading was moderate.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 893.38 (+3.05)
Born:
Rodney King, American taxi driver and central figure in the 1992 Los Angeles riots; in Sacramento, California (d. 2012).
Derrick McAdoo, NFL running back (St. Louis-Phoenix Cardinals, Tampa Bay Buccaneers), in Pensacola, Florida.
Garland Jean-Batiste, NFL running back (New Orleans Saints), in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Died:
Krishna Kumarsinhji Bhavsinhji, 52, Indian monarch and politician, last Maharaja of the Bhavnagar State and first Governor of Madras State (now Tamil Nadu).
More photos here: https://www.facebook.com/mark.olivares.71
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