Op4
e r
-7AUG 1967
FOR PRESS IIBR AVW4
PM. No. 78/ 1967
VISIT OF U. S. MISSION
Statement by the Prime Minister, Mr Harold Holt
President Johnson's special representatives, General Maxwell
Taylor and Mr Clark Clifford, arrive in Canberra tomorrow morning.
Accompanied by Ambassador Clark, they are to commence talks with me
and some of my senior colleagues at the Lodge at noon. We will have a
working lunch and continue our talks through the afternoon.
If necessary we shall meet again in the course of Sunday.
Other Ministers present will be the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister
for Trade and Industry, Mr McEwen, the Treasurer, Mr McMahon, the
Minister for External Affairs, Mr Hasluck, and the Minister for Defence,
Mr Fairhall. This visit will be part of the series General Taylor and Mr
Clifford are making at the request of President Johnson to the group of
countries represented at the Manila Summit Conference of October last
year. One of their purposes will be to canvass the desirability, time and
place of another such meeting. Wie had agreed at Manila that it was
desirable we should confer again. The question of another meeting has
been discussed informally by me with four of the national leaders who
attended the Manila Conference with whom I have come into direct personal
contact in the course of the year Prime Minister Ky, Mr Holyoake,
President Park and President Johnson. We feel that it would be useful to
meet again, but it has been my own view that this meetiffg should occur
after the Presidential election has been held in South Vietnam.
Tomorrow's meeting comes within a sequence of exchanges,
not only between Austr alia and the United States, but in various forms between
the countries represented at Manila. The Foreign Ministers of all the
countries met in Washington in April and there have been subsequent
discussions between Ambassadors, in addition to extensive diplomatic
communication. Australian/ American consultations are continuous at the
diplomatic level, supplemented from time to time by visits of Government
leaders or representatives to the United States or to Australia. The present
visit falls in this latter category.
As President Johnson has publicly indicated, the purpose of
this particular visit is to follow up the assessment made by Secretary
McNamara from his recent mission to Vietnam, and to discuss fully with
the Manila Conference group of nations all aspects of the situation there.
We welcome it as a practical and further expression of the known desire of
the United States Government to conduct its policies in relation to Vietnam in
full consultation with its allies.
The visit will be most valuable in sustaining at the top levels of
government of the participating countries a close exchange of views about the
conduct of our comibined effort to bring an end to communist aggression and to
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promote peace and progress in Vietnam.
Mr Clifford and General Taylor have a high place in the
confidence of the United States Administration and of the allied governments.
WVe give them a warm welcome to Australia as friends and partners in the
tasks we share with their country and our other allies.
CANBERRA, 28th July, 1967.