SAN FRANCISCO CONFERENCE

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26529, 18 September 1951, Page 7

SAN FRANCISCO CONFERENCE

‘DIPLOMATIC TRIUMPH FOR U.S.’

(Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON September 17. Commenting on the Japanese Peace Treaty, the “Economist." says that in the kar East a new situation has arisen with the Japanese once more able to shape their own destinies, and in the world as a whole, the Russians have taken a knock which almost certainly widens rather than narrows the gulf between them and the free democracies.

“Indeed there is something mysterious about the way in which Mr Gromyko so painstakingly went to San Francisco, hired a large villa for a month’s stay, and then not only failed completely to make any impression on the fate of the Japanese treaty, but also even missed a glorious opportunity of making propaganda capital in Asia. The Americans, and Mr Acheson personally, have secured one of the most outstanding diplomatic triumphs since the cold war began.” The “Economist” adds that in Korea, the right course for the United Nations must not be to prepare for either peace or a new enemy offensive, but to expect what is perhaps even more trying—something in between, neither a truce nor an all-out war. “One certain fact in recent weeks is that the first move for an armistice did come from the Communists. Presumably, therefore, they wanted one. At the same time they deliberately made this impossible to attain and to-day the Chinese are as aggressive in pursuit of their claims to all Korea as they ever were. The United Nations interest remains exactly the same as before—to do everything possible to prevent the war from spreading beyond Korea and to bring the fighting to an end on a defensible line.

General Ridgway has now given the Communists an opportunity to reopen the armistice talks without loss of face by apologising for the attack on buildings in the Kaesong neutral zone by a United Nations aircraft. His task, which he has been performing admirably, is to distinguish between yielding nothing to the froth and bubble of insult, apparently inseparable from Communist manoeuvrings, and the need to prevent the strength of his own position from making him and his negotiators too rigid in outlook.”