Russell Appeal RUSSIAN PLANES FOR N. VIETNAM

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31118, 22 July 1966, Page 11

Russell Appeal RUSSIAN PLANES FOR N. VIETNAM

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, July 21. The philosopher Earl (Bertrand) Russell said yesterday that he had appealed to the Soviet Premier, Alexei Kosygin, to place Russian Air Force planes at the disposal of North Vietnam.

“I have appealed to the Soviet Premier: Give the Vietnamese the means of defending their people in Vietnam against the air power of the United States military machine,” Lord Russell said in a statement. “The Soviet Air Force would confine itself to defending the Vietnamese over Vietnamese territory, thus localising the war while serving justice and defending a brsve people,” the statement said.

Lord Russell said North Vietnam was within its rights to try any captured American pilots. “The United States Government has not dared to declare war on its Vi p tnamese victims,” the 94-year-old philosopher said in his statement. “Its pilots are guilty of barbarous attacks, taking thousands of lives with weapons which defy the imagination in evil effect. The Vietnamese are fully within their rights to try the pilots.” He said the National Liberation Front in Vietnam had offered him fullest support for his plan for a war crimes tribunal to try President Johnson and other United States leaders in their absence for “brutal treatment of the people of Vietnam.”