SOUTH-EAST ASIA AID

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 113, 25 February 1950, Page 5

SOUTH-EAST ASIA AID

U.S. MISSION TO VISIT AREA USE OF FUNDS FOR CHINA <N.Z.P. A.—Copyright) WASHINGTON, Feb. 23. The United States will send a special survey mission to Southeast Asia next week to prepare the way for American help in bolstering the area against Communism. The mission will visit Saigon, in In do-China, Singapore, Rangoon in Burma, and Bangkok, in Siam. The mission’s terms of reference will include the possibility of European Co-operation Administration assistence to Indo-China, Export-Import Bank loans, and the possibility that arms might be sent to the area with funds appropriated in 1949 for the general area of China. The State Department was looking hopefully for South-East Asian countries to join together in an economic, political, and social programme backed by American dollar aid, said the Secretary of State (Mr Dean Acheson) today. Any such association, however, would have to be spontaneous, and the United States must wait for the nations to act first. “They are thinking about it, but there are no concrete results ye't,” Mr Acheson said. He was addressing the Foreign Relations Committee in support of a 2,950,000,000-dollar programme for European recovery in the next year. He said that the Administration had no intention of recommending a programme for South-East Asia similar to the Economic Co-operation Administration’s operations in-Europe. “We will woi’k vigorously with the Governments in the Far East, trying to be of what help we can in solving their economic problems,” Mr Acheson said.

Russia’s possession of the atomicbomb increased the difficulties of achieving recovery in Europe, he said. Any strengthening of the Russian military potential was a very important factor in Europe’s recovery.