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TRANSCRIPT: ROGERS: SEQ 4: "It's been encouraging to find that about 90 per cent of the country is secure and that elections have been held in the villages and hamlets of about 90 per cent of the country and that in one sense of the word I suppose you could say that in that area of the country the war's not being waged. Now it is true that the location of the war has changed to some extent. There's some fighting in Cambodia now but we're very heartened by the fact that the war has been reduced instead of being enlarged in greater intensity, in considerably less intensity that the casualty rates - at least as far as the United States is concerned and I would presume this applies generally - this week -- which the figures will come out on Thursday -- are very low, much lower than they have been for sometime. Which to me is - at least for this week - is a justification for the rationale which the President used in the decision on Cambodia. One of the reasons he made that decision was that he felt that even though the casualty rates might be increased during the Cambodian incursions, in the long run the casualties would be reduced and certainly the results of last week's casualties support that. And we would hope that this continues in the future.




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Background: Speaking at a press conference at Saigon Airport prior to his departure for Tokyo on Tuesday (July 7), U.S. Secretary of State William P. Rogers said that casualty rates of US forces had declined considerably.

Mr Rogers had been attending a two-day meeting of South Vietnam's war allies, and had visited the Mekong delta province of Ba Xuyen, formerly a Viet Cong stronghold.

During his press conference, the Secretary of State said that it was encouraging to find that about 90 per cent of the country was now secure and that elections have been held in about 90 per cent of the villages and hamlets.

The decline in U.S. casualty rates for the past week, he said, indicated that President Nixon's decision to enter Cambodia had been justified, for although the casualty rates might have been increased during the Cambodian operations, there was evidence to show they would be greatly reduced in the long run.

Speaking at the press conference, Secretary of State Rogers said: