U.S. General Predicts 'Disengagement

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31112, 15 July 1966, Page 13

U.S. General Predicts ' Disengagement

<N f. Press Association —Kopi/rioht)

WASHINGTON, July 13.

An Air Force general who commanded United States air attacks against North Vietnam predicted today that continued bombing strikes would soon force the Hanoi leadership to consider some form of disengagement from the war, the Associated Press reported.

“I think it’s going to be pretty soon he’s (the enemy) going to have second thoughts and try to figure out some way of disengagement,” Lieuten-ant-General Joseph H. Moore, told a news conference.

He declined to go Into details of what he meant by disengagement. Speaking of the 18-month bombing campaign against North Vietnam, LieutenantGeneral Moore said: “Although these pressures may not by themselves be decisive, added to the setbacks elsewhere and lack of forthright external military support from the Communist world, in my opinion continued selective bombing of militarily significant targets in North Vietnam should convince the Hanoi Government to consider some form of disengagement.” Telling Effect

The three-star general, commander of the Seventh Air Force, said he believes the bombing of military targets “is beginning to have telling effect.”

Some high United States

officials have speculated that when the price of the bombings and their losses became too high, the North Vietnamese leaders might quietly withdraw their forces from South Vietnam and stop supplying Communist insurgents, without any formal East-West negotiations. Lieutenant-General Moore, who spent 2| years in Vietnam, said the recent bombing strikes against key oil stocks in the Hanoi Haiphong area have been the most dramatic recent developments in the 18-month air war. Other Targets United Press International reported Lieutenant-General Moore as saying there were “a number of military targets” in North Vietnam besides the already-hit oil depots near Hanoi and Haiphong that could be struck with “rather painful” effects for the Communists. He made it clear he was

t not forecasting what type of ■ additional targets might be '{attacked in the North, but ■lsaid Air Force planes were ' able and capable of hitting i anything Washington ordered - them to strike.