KOREA TRUCE PROPOSAL

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27055, 2 June 1953, Page 7

KOREA TRUCE PROPOSAL

Enemy Reply On Thursday

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11 p.m.) SEOUL, June 1. The South Korean Foreign Minister, Mr Pyun Yung Tai, said today that his Government believed that the Communists would accept the latest truce proposal.

“The new proposal is exactly what the Communists have demanded and now we come to the point where we cannot compromise further.

“If the Communists still disagree it means they want a third world war. This I do not believe.

“Therefore, they will agree this time to the United Nations proposal. Some people think that the South Korean army will not be able to go on fighting if United Nations ammunition and other military supplies stop. Just wait and see,” he said.

The Communists are expected to give their reply to the latest United Nations plan to break the prisoner of war deadlock next Thursday.

The President of South Korea (Dr. Syngmgn Rhee) sat up late last night personally typing a top-secret document believed to be a letter to Mr Eisenhower on the United Nations Korean armistice proposals. Dr. Rhee fears that the proposals for settling the prisoner-or-war issue, which is the only bar to the turmistice, might result in Korea being left divided. to which he is strongly opposed. Dr. Rhee, who at a retreat at Chinhaw. near Pusan, consulted only his Austrian-born wife and Ms Foreign Minister, Mr Pyun Yung Tai, according to sources close to him. He was replying to a letter sent to him by Mr Eisenhower in an attempt to resolve the dispute between South Korea and the United Nations over the truce proposals. The United States Ambassador to Korea. Mr Ellis Briggs, who it is believed handed over Mr Eisenhower’s letter, would not comment today.

Mrs Rhee, who is described as one of the strongest influences in South Korean politics, is one of the President’s main advisers on international relations.

Dr. Rhee will hold an important conference at the Chinhaw retreat today with his Cabinet and with leading military advisers. Earlier it was reported that the Foreign Minister (Mr Pyun Yung Tai) had been speaking in jest when he had said that South Korea would oppose by force any landing of Indian troops in Korea. The South Korean news agency, Oriental Press, said yesterday that the Foreign Minister, in an interview with their correspondent at Pusan, had referred to the possibility of Indian troops assisting neutral nation custodians of prisoners after an armistice.

He had said jokingly the Korean equivalent of: “We must kick them out.”

The news agency said its report on his statement as published in the Korean language implied that he was only joking, but the English translation treated it as a statement of South Korean policy.