WaybackWire

MOSCOW, Tuesday.—The Soviet Government said today that by its quarantine of Cuba “the United States of America is taking a step towards the unleashing of a world thermonuclear war”.

The American Ambassador, Mr Foy Kohler, was called to the Foreign Ministry to receive the statement, which calls the quarantine piracy. It instructs the Soviet delegate at the United Nations to ask for an immediate meeting of the Security Council.

Soviet aid to Cuba, the statement says, is designed solely to strengthen its defences, as the joint Soviet-Cuban communique of 3 September made plain, and “not a single Soviet nuclear bomb will fall either on the United States or on any other country unless aggression has been committed”.

“Cuba belongs to the Cuban people, and only they can be masters of their fate,” it says.

Tass announced that all military leaves are cancelled, and discharges halted for the senior age groups in the strategic rocket forces, the anti-aircraft defence troops and the submarine fleet.

The Defence Minister, Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, reported on measures to raise combat readiness, and Marshal Andrei Grechko summoned officers of the Warsaw Pact armies.

UNITED NATIONS, New York, Tuesday.—The Security Council, with the Soviet delegate, Mr Valerian Zorin, in the chair, heard the United States, the Soviet Union and Cuba trade charges today and adjourned without action until Wednesday morning.

The Council met at 4 p.m. and took the three requests together.

Mr Adlai Stevenson repeated the President’s charge about the missile sites and said the United States had only “contempt for blackmail”. “There is a road to peace,” he said, and it began with the American resolution.

Mr Zorin answered that “no self-respecting state will permit its shipping to be tampered with”. He declared: “This small and heroic country of Cuba will not remain alone in this difficult hour.”

A Soviet draft resolution would condemn the American action, insist that Washington revoke its decision to inspect ships bound for Cuba, and call on the three countries to negotiate.

Cuba’s ambassador, Mr Mario Garcia Inchaustegui, answered Mr Stevenson with the national oath: “Our homeland or death! We shall prevail!” Cuba said it would not accept U.N. observers on its soil.

Afterwards 37 neutral nations met in secret and decided to ask U Thant to appeal to the parties to refrain from any action that might endanger world peace, France-Presse reports. Mr Zenon Rossides of Cyprus, Mr Alex Quaison-Sackey of Ghana and a delegate of the United Arab Republic will carry the request.

HAVANA, Tuesday.—Prime Minister Fidel Castro said tonight that Cuba will not disarm, and warned that anyone who tries to inspect arms in Cuba had better come ready for combat.

Speaking to the nation, Dr Castro called the American quarantine an act of piracy and rejected any limit on Cuba’s arms or any United Nations inspection. “Our arms are defensive,” he said. He declared: “Cuba is not the Congo.”

“The nation has awakened on a war footing, ready to repulse any attack,” Havana radio said. Forces numbering hundreds of thousands have been mobilised.

The editor of El Mundo, speaking on television, accused Mr Kennedy of “a whole series of falsehoods about Cuba”.

Cuba has closed Havana airport to civilian traffic. Pan American and KLM flights have been suspended; they had been carrying about 1,600 Cuban refugees a week.

NEW DELHI, Tuesday.—Chinese troops have widened their bridgehead in the North-East Frontier Agency and now threaten the monastery town of Towang, the Defence Ministry said today.

Indian troops have been pushed back seven or eight miles east of Bhutan, and the Chinese launched a new attack a few miles farther east at Bum Pass, a defence spokesman said. Towang lies some 15 miles south of the McMahon Line.

In Ladakh, in the west, the situation is unchanged. Elsewhere on the border the fighting went on without major change, a day after Mr Nehru warned the nation that the conflict threatens India’s independence.

Peking radio charged that Indian troops had crossed the McMahon Line, and said Chinese forces would no longer respect the 48-year-old boundary.

In the same breath Peking offered to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the border conflict. It proposed a meeting between the Prime Minister, Mr Nehru, and the Chinese Premier, Mr Chou En-lai, in a broadcast picked up in Tokyo.

LONDON, Tuesday.—More than 2,000 demonstrators fought police outside the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square today, and 124 were arrested.

The banner-waving crowd, mostly youngsters and many of them West Indians, shouted “Viva Fidel, Kennedy to hell!” Helmeted policemen standing eight rows deep halted them at the front door. The fighting lasted about an hour.

Charges range from breach of the peace to stealing a policeman’s helmet; at least six policemen were put out of action. Bertrand Russell’s Committee of 100 sponsored the demonstration.

It followed the British Government’s announcement of strong and unequivocal support for the quarantine.

In Tokyo the Foreign Ministry said unavoidable circumstances had forced Mr Kennedy to act as he did, and hoped the crisis would be settled through the United Nations. Japanese air units were put on special alert at five bases. Nationalist China voiced full support.

Canada barred Soviet planes bound for Cuba from its bases, and Mr Diefenbaker proposed that a team of neutrals go to Cuba to check the American charge.

In West Berlin, a cab driver who heard Mr Kennedy on his car radio said: “That’s the kind of talk we like to hear.”