Barry Suggests 'Commies' Lead Buddhist Protest

A Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee suggested last night that Buddhist protests against the government of South Vietnam might have been Communist inspired.

Asked whether the U.S. should out off aid to South Vietnam because of President Diem's policies, Rep. Robert Barry (R.N.Y.) told a Harvard Young Republican Club audience that "I just don't know about these stories. I'm not sure the Commies haven't been sending the Buddhists in. I just don't know."

But he said he hoped the internal difficulties in South Vietnam would not hamper military operations against the Viet Cong guerrillas.

"I can't imagine Gen. [Paul D.] Harkins doing anything different because of a squabble going on at the Presidential Palace or a few Buddhist temples getting burned," he said. "The military have gone ahead. This trouble with Mme. Nhu and Diem is all rather remote. The soldiers are getting fed every day."

Barry called for a strong effort to defend Vietnam and Laos against Communist guerillas. He said that if South Vietnam fell to the Communists he expected Cambodia would "go under in a few months," and Thailand shortly there-after.

Asked whether the U.S. should alter its military strategy and bomb the Communist capital of Hanoi, Barry replied, "I don't think so. It does us no good to bomb a city and kill a million innocent people. Now, I think if we were to bomb a port and hamper their supply lines, that would be different.

"We couldn't do it ourselves, but if the South Vietnamese wanted to do it, I don't think we'd stop them." Asked if he favored a South Vietnamese offensive against North Vietnam, Barry replied, "Well, I'd just have to say that I'm not against it."

He added, however, that the "mutual Vietnamese fear of China" made it possible that the country might be reunite again the future. "There's some possibility of the North Vietnamese calming down, cutting it out, and getting together again with the South," he said.

The Congressman would not say whether he agreed with the forecast by Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor that the war in South Vietnam would be over by 1965. "I think we obviously have the capacity to win," he said, "but I think that's putting too definite a date on it."

Barry said he thought Russian strategy in Southeast Asia had changed during the last three years, and that the Russians now favored a neutral Southeast Asia.

"At the time Laos was partitioned, I didn't think it would work out," he said, "but I may have to eat my words. I think with their worries about the Chinese role in Asia, the Russians would be very glad to see that part of the world neutral. And without Russian help these guerrillas never would have gotten anywhere."

He said he thought Communist guerrillas in Laos had "lost all their incentive" when the United States sent troops to the Thailand-Laos border in 1961