REPUBLICS CLASH

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28267, 3 May 1957, Page 9

REPUBLICS CLASH

Nicaragua And Honduras (Rec. 11.30 p.m.) MANAGUA (Nicaragua), May 2. A 50-year-old border dispute between Nicaragua and Honduras threatened today to develop into war. Nicaragua said 35 of its soldiers were killed in a frontier attack by Honduran troops and planes. President Luis Somoza announced the casualties last night a few hours after he was sworn in as Chief of State. He went into immediate conference with his brother, General Anastasio Somoza, and other officials. The President said a superior force of Honduran soldiers supported by five planes attacked a Nicaraguan national guard patrol at Mocoron yesterday morning. Thirty-five Nicaraguans were killed, two were captured and the rest fled, he said. The attack came just 12 hours after General Somoza. called off mobilisation on the ground that Honduras was seeking a peaceful solution to the dispute through the Organisation of American States. President Somoza said Honduran forces also captured a Nicaraguan radio station at Mocoron, a town on the Cruta river in the Mosquitia territory claimed by both Nicaragua and Honduras. It is on the Caribbean side of the central American isthmus, and 50 miles inland.

Nicaragua has rejected a claim by Hond iras that the territory belongs to H nduras under an award issued by King Alfonso XIII of Spain in 1906. The issue long has lain dormant between the two countries but began to warm up when Honduras created the department of Gracias a Dios in February, including the disputed territory in it, after United States companies started prospecting there for oil. Honduran official sources said Nicaragua started the border conflict by sending 50 troops into Mocoron last Thursday, forcing residents to flee and seizing all available foodstuffs.

Honduras broke off diplomatic relations with Nicaragua last Friday and complained to the Organisation of American States in Washington yesterday that Nicaragua had committed “repeated acts of aggression’’ against Honduras.

Maddocks Not Available for Tour.— The Australian test wicketkeeper. Len Maddocks, today announced that he was not available for the Australian tour of South Africa later this year. Since the retirement of the regular Australian ’keeper, G. Langley. Maddocks has been tipped as certain to be the test ’keeper.—Melbourne. May 2.

Officials said that substantive United States reaction to the plan would have to come from Mr Harold Stassen, President Eisenhower’s special disarmament adviser attending the London Disarmament Sub-committee talks. The talks are now in recess until Monday.

The Soviet plan to exchange the aerial inspection of Eastern Siberia,. Kamchatka and Sakhalin, together with a small part of European Russia, for “open skies” over most of Europe, Alaska and the entire Western part of the United States was described in newspaper headlines today as a “bad bargain.” Diplomatic observers said that although the geographical areas thrown open to inspection on each side might be equivalent in size, there was a great difference in

terms of military productive capacity between, say, California with its aircraft industries, and the snowy wastes of Kamchatka. Some observers thought, however, that the Soviet proposals on this score might contain a possibility of compromise. On another part of the Soviet plan, officials said that the United States still held to its view that there could be no abolition of nuclear weapons and tests without effective controls to ensure full compliance.