N. Vietnam ‘Obliteration’ Threat By Senator

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31120, 25 July 1966, Page 13

N. Vietnam ‘Obliteration’ Threat By Senator

(N.Z. Press Association-Copyright)

WASHINGTON, July 24. A Democratic Senator from Louisiana said yesterday that if the North Vietnamese tried United States pilots as war criminals he would try to see that America did whatever was necessary to “obliterate” the Government of North Vietnam and totally destroy its natural resources.

He is Senator Allen J. Ellender, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which is considering a $58.6 thousand million House-approved defence appropriation. He said in a radio report to his constituents that the Vietnamese leaders had already violated the Geneva Convention by parading Air Force Captain Murphy Jones of Baton Rouge, Lousiana. through the streets of Hanoi. He said such treatment was “shameful and disgusting.”

Meanwhile United States military authorities reported that American prisoners of war held by North Vietnam so far appeared to have adhered to the post-Korea code of conduct, which pledges them not to disclose anything more than their “name, rank, serial number and date of birth.”

Johnson Warning Information admittedly is meagre, because the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese have barred representatives of the International Red Cross Committee from the prison camps and have refused to negotiate concerning the treatment of the captives.

President Johnson warned yesterday that if 'Communist aggression can win in Asia it

can succeed in Africa and Latin America. The president was on an eight-speech tour through Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois.

In speech after speech he hammered at the theme that I the United States will stay in Vietnam “until the Communists end the fighting or nego-

tiate an honourable peace.” i Before 42.000 people in Indianapolis he departed from his text to scold critics of bis policies in Washington.

He noted that the Viet Cong “had attacked a United States navy hospital in Da Nang” and that at least three American sailors were injured.

“There are people who denounce our oil strikes against depots in North Vietnam, but they remain strangely silent when the Viet Cong turns mortars on a hospital," the President said.