SENATOR ATTACKS U.S. POLICY

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28270, 7 May 1957, Page 14

SENATOR ATTACKS U.S. POLICY

Aid To Communist Countries Opposed

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

(Rec. 10 p.m.) NEW YORK, May 5. The Republican Party’s Senate leader, Senator William Knowland, said today that he was opposed to “taxing the American people to support the economics of Communist countries.”

“It does not make sense to me that the United States and our free allies would embark upon a programme to rescue the Communist world from its own evil shortcomings,’’ the Senator said.

Senator Knowland, who spoke at a luncheon of the American Jewish League against Communism, said that the Communist world contained the seeds of its own destruction.

“Sooner or later there will be - another Hungary,” he said. He criticised the Eisenhower Administration’s proposed loan and trade programmes with some countries behind the Iron Curtain. “While the Communist world is reaching a crisis in its economic and political life, it is now proposed that we open wider the doors of trade in strategic and non-strategic materials,” he said. “We assume the burden of supplying agricultural supplies to the Polish Communist regime so they can better concentrate on supplying strategic coal and uranium to the Soviet Union, as well as others, to strengthen their economy and enhance totalitarian government.” Senator Knowland told the 400 diners celebrating Israel’s independence anniversary that it soon would be announced that the United States would send more jet fighter planes to Jugoslavia.

“We have many good and stout allies that need jet planes,” he said. “All of them should have a priority.”

[ln Washington, a State Department spokesman said that the matter of z supplying military aid to Jugoslavia was still under consideration and ’hat nothing definite had been decided.] Senator Knowland said that It also had been proposed that 100,000,000 dollars be made available to Poland while that Government was making loans to the North Vietnamese and the Chinese Communists.

“I do not favour taxing the American people to support Communist economic and political systems abroad,” ue said. Senator Knowlana said that cracks had been showing in the Communist ’’empire” since 1953. He gave as examples the uprisings in East Germany, the restlessness in Poland, the Hungarian revolt, and stress and strain in Communist China.