Panelists Call for Non-Violent Resolution of Policy Problems

The United States must pursue a foreign policy of non-intervention and non-violence to insure world peace, a panel of speakers on international issues told a Science Center audience yesterday.

"More violent revolution, more misery, and more suffering will result" unless the U.S. recognizes the importance of establishing good relations with non-aligned socialist Third World countries, Russell Johnson, former director of a Quaker seminar program in Southeast Asia, said.

Johnson criticized the United States' failure to recognize the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and charged that the U.S. does not "recognize the force of nationalism and the importance of non-alignment."

Johnson and four other panelists spoke yesterday at the second part of a symposium on non-violent foreign policy, consponsored by the Harvard Committee on International Studies and the International Seminars on Training for Non-violent Action. Each of the panelists outlined specific U.S. foregin policy problems and suggested non-violent solutions.

Addressing the possibility of U.S. intervention in El Salvador's civil war, Ulises Torres, an exiled minister from Chile, said, "Even the most humble peasant knows the problem is not Cuba or the U.S.S.R. El Salvador's system of injustice is the main problem." Torres added that to avoid "a very scary situation," the U.S. should not initiate a conflict with Cuba over El Salvador.

"President Reagan is resurrecting the 'they-only-understand-force' foreign policy toward the Soviet Union. "Marta Daniels of the American Friends Service Committee (AIFS), told the audience of approximately 25 persons. Reagan's policy could result in the "greatest pinnacle of insecurity this globe has ever known." Daniels added.

U.S. military, economic, and diplomatic support should be withdrawn from South Africa, Mary Anderson, director of Radcliffe's Bunting Institute, said. She added that the U.S. should vote against South African intervention in Namibia in an upcoming United Nations resolution.