WaybackWire

UNITED NATIONS, New York, Monday.—The United States and Cuba tonight each asked for an urgent Security Council meeting.

Ambassador Adlai Stevenson wrote to the President of the Council that the United States has “incontrovertible evidence” that the Soviet Union has been installing in Cuba facilities for launching offensive nuclear missiles, and the weapons themselves.

His letter recalled Soviet assurances, given on 11 September and by Mr Gromyko at the General Assembly on 21 September, that the arms were for defence only.

An American draft resolution calls for all missiles and other offensive weapons to be dismantled and withdrawn from Cuba at once, with a U.N. observer corps to report on compliance and the quarantine to end once the U.N. certifies compliance. It urges Washington and Moscow to confer promptly.

Cuba’s ambassador, Mr Mario Garcia Inchaustegui, asked for an urgent meeting to consider “the act of war unilaterally committed by the Government of the United States in ordering the naval blockade of Cuba”. It “is creating an imminent danger of war”, his letter said.

NORFOLK, Virginia, Monday.—Navy wives and children uprooted from the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba were flown into Norfolk tonight, still in light summer clothes and shivering in 51-degree weather.

The word reached the families minutes before noon: “Pack one bag each and get ready to leave.” They were given 90 minutes to say goodbye.

Five Marine Corps turbo-jet transports brought 321 evacuees, some of them civil service employees, into Atlantic Fleet headquarters. Carrying heavy suitcases and bewildered by the suddenness of it all, they were taken by bus to the Little Creek amphibious base and housed in a three-storey barracks.

Civilians, servicemen and Red Cross workers set about making them comfortable. Sailors were called in to rock babies and mix formulas, and one store sent playpens, which were turned into cribs.

Altogether the Navy is to bring more than 2,000 dependants out of the base.

WASHINGTON, Monday.—Washington waited all day for the President’s word, as congressional leaders were flown in by Air Force jet.

The White House asked the networks for half an hour on “a subject of the highest national urgency”, and would say no more. Leaders of both parties were called in for 5 p.m., and the cabinet and National Security Council were to meet.

In Chicago the Senate Republican leader, Mr Everett Dirksen, told reporters “it could be Cuba”.

Virtually every ship at Key West put to sea, officially for the annual naval manoeuvres at Puerto Rico. An Associated Press reporter flying over the base could see only one destroyer, where five destroyers and three destroyer escorts are normally based.

Before the broadcast Mr George Ball of the State Department briefed 46 ambassadors, among them those of the NATO and Latin American countries.

In Appleton, Wisconsin, as the teletypes poured out bulletins in the afternoon, callers to the Post-Crescent asked, “Just what’s going on?” Housewives sat glued to radio and television, wondering whether it would be invasion or blockade.

NEW DELHI, Monday.—Mr Nehru told India tonight that Chinese aggression menaces its freedom, and called on every Indian to join the struggle.

Speaking over All India Radio after a long interval, he said: “The time has, therefore, come for us to realise fully this menace that threatens the freedom of our people and the independence of our country.”

Indian troops, he said, had been overwhelmed by vast numbers and by bigger guns. “I am grieved at the set-back to our troops that have occurred on this frontier and the reverses we have had.”

Everything else must be sacrificed if necessary to meet the threat, Mr Nehru said. He was confident the final result would be in India’s favour, and called on the nation to gird up its loins to face Chinese aggression. India would continue its policy of non-alignment.

He appealed to all: “I invite all of you to whatever religion or party or group you may belong to be comrades in this great struggle that has been forced upon us.”

The Union Cabinet today ruled out a special session of Parliament, which the Praja Socialist Party had pressed for.

NEW DELHI, Monday.—The Chinese are using tanks at the western end of the border and have opened a new attack in the east near Burma, an Indian spokesman said today, the third day of the Chinese offensive.

Four more Indian posts have fallen at the southern end of the Ladakh front, one of them to tanks after it had beaten off two assaults. The fronts in Ladakh and in the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) lie 900 miles apart.

Peking Radio reported fighting in a new area on the north side of the border and said Chinese troops “were compelled to hit back”. It claimed the Indians had been forced back along the whole frontier.

The offensive opened on Saturday on both fronts, when forward posts in NEFA and Ladakh fell after stiff fighting. By Sunday the Chinese had pushed four miles into NEFA, and were fighting for Thagla.

Supplies to the forward troops depend on air drops and human pack trains, and the winter snow has set in.