U.S. OPINION OF KOREAN WAR

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26398, 17 April 1951, Page 7

U.S. OPINION OF KOREAN WAR

“Fighting Must Continue” (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 10 p.m.) WASHINGTON, April 15. The Assistant-Secretary of State (Mr Dean Rusk) said to-day that the United Nations must continue fighting Communist aggression within Korea. Mr Rusk, who was making a television broadcast, said that the expansion of the Korean war might provoke a fullscale world war, while a complete withdrawal from Korea would merely encourage the aggressors to strike elsewhere. “The people who advocate those courses are asking us to choose which of two roads to disaster we should take. Our choice must be to take neither if we can avoid it.”

Mr Rusk said that the United Nations must pin its hopes for peace in Korea on the amount of damage the Allied forces could inflict on the Communists there.

He admitted that there was no present sign that the Communists intended to give up their determination to conquer all Korea, but he added: "But if we count their casualties, and the forces they now have in Korea the aggressors have committed at least 1.250,000 troops to their criminal effort, and are right where they were when the first attack was launched. “In Red China itself the people are increasingly worried about sending waves of Chinese manpower into the fiery furnace of modern firepower in a foreign land, in a war hatched up by someone else.”