BELGIAN CRISIS Doctors Ready To Flee

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30978, 7 February 1966, Page 13

BELGIAN CRISIS Doctors Ready To Flee

(N’.Z.P.A. Reuter—Copyright) BRUSSELS, Feb. 6. Belgian doctors today packed their bags for a midnight dash across the frontier to avoid call*up if the Government refuses to bow to their demands for a ban on free hospital treatment.

Some of the country’s 9000 doctors planned to stay behind to run emergency hospital centres for urgent cases.

But the country’s leading medical federation, which has issued a strike call with a deadline at midnight tonight, advised the rest to prepare to flee the country and avoid being called up.

The medical federation had said it would cancel its strike call if King Baudouin accepted the resignation of the Social Christian (Catho-lic)-Socialist coalition Government, which was split over the issue of the doctors’ demands. KING REFUSES

However, the King last night refused to accept the resignation. He said it was untimely while the country emerged from bitter social unrest and faced the threat of more trouble.

He apparently referred to riots by coalminers striking in the north, in which two miners were killed in clashes with police last week.

The King called on the Government to seek a compromise with the doctors, expressing concern that the exercise of political power was "constantly being downgraded” in Belgium. STRIKE STANDS Late last night, after an abortive attempt to see the Prime Minister, Mr Hannel. for "last chance” negotiations. the medical federation issued a communique saying that the strike notice stood unless it received later today sufficient guarantees that its demands would be met 1 . Meanwhile, Mr Hannel said his cabinet would continue to search for a solution to the problem and asked the doctors for a truce—“that no-one should fix for the moment, any time limits, conditions or other limits to the solutions of the problems facing our country.”