Saturday, May 13, 1972
China Won't Help End War - Mansfield
WASHINGTON (AP) --Senate Democratic leader Mike Mansfield said Thursday talks with China's leaders convinced him China will not intervene to release U.S. war prisoners or end the war on a basis not satisfactory to North Vietnam.Reporting to the Senate after a three-week tour of China that took him and Senate Republican leader Hugh Scott to six cities, Mansfield said the current escalation of the war has "tarnished" the significance of President Nixon's historic trip to Peking.Mansfield met for more than eight hours with Chinese Premier Chou En-Lai and he reported:"The Chinese made clear their belief that the resumption of the bombing of the North could prolong rather than end the war."The discussions with China's leaders painted a "bleak picture" of the prospects for peace on the basis of policies now being pursued by the United States and the North Vietnamese, Mansfield said."Unless there are changes in the present course, therefore, visits to China will not alter the indefinite continuance of the blood-letting of Americans, Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians, the destruction of the culture and environment of the Indochinese countries, the waste of tens of billions of dollars ..." Mansfield said.American prisoners, he said, will be released "only when U.S. air and naval operations cease.""China Won"t Help End War – Mansfield", by (AP), published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes Saturday, May 13, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.