TRUCE TALKS IN KOREA

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 26943, 20 January 1953, Page 7

TRUCE TALKS IN KOREA

Renewal Held Unlikely (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11 p.m.) SAN FRANCISCO. Jan. 19. . It was unlikely that the truce negotiations would be resumed in Korea, Brigadier-General William Nuckols said today. General Nuckols, a former spokesman for the United Nations in the Panmunjon negotiations, arrived in San Francisco on his way to take up a new assignment as chief public information officer for General Ridgway in Europe. “The terms of a purely military armistice are now in general agreement,” said General Nuckols. “The primary issue still unsolved is prisoner of war exchange and that is a little above military level. It is something that must be settled at Government level, if it is to be settled at all. And that being so, it is unlikely that there, will be further talks (which are now indefinitely recessed) at Parimunjon or any other place between the two fighting lines. If discussions are resumed, it is more likely to be in a neutral nation’s capital or possibly in the United Nations.”

Referring to the criticism that with all the air strikes against the enemy supply lines and bases, the Communist armies in North Korea continued their build-up, General Nuckols said: “You must remember that for the last 15 months the Communists have controlled the timetable of the war. With no offensive action by our ground forces, the Communist commanders fired ammunition only when they had some to spare. If they started 100 rounds towards the front and our planes destroyed 90 rounds before it was out of the crates, that still left 10 rounds that, arrived at the gun. If the gun fired but five rounds that day, that is a net build-up of five rounds. “This is low and apparently not sufficient for the enemy to believe he has what it takes to launch an offensive. Furthermore, he moves his supply trains at night. If he were on an offensive he would ha yy e to try to move supplies by day as well. But he knows he can’t because our planes will have a field day. The Air Force is the deterrent that keeps him from making an all-out attack.” General Nuckols added that the number of MiG’s definitely destroyed in the Korean fighting was 575. United Nations losses in air battles were an eighth of that.