TRUCE TALKS IN SECRET

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27089, 11 July 1953, Page 7

TRUCE TALKS IN SECRET

South Koreans Absent (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 12.10 a.m. SEOUL, July 10. The meeting of the full truce teams at Panmunjon today lasted 29 minutes. The delegates will meet again tomorrow. The talks were in secret, and no announcement was made afterwards. South Koreans were not represented. The South Korean Government today issued a statement rejecting the latest Communist letter to General Mark Clark as “insulting” and saying it assumed that the sovereign Korean Republic was to be ordered and disposed of at the will of the United Nations Command.

The Communist letter to General Clark, delivered at Panmunjon on Wednesday, agreed to the resumption of the armistice discussions but blamed the United Nations for allowing Dr. Rhee to release anti-Communist North Korean prisoners of war. It insisted that the United Nations must accept full responsibility for ensuring that no such incidents would occur again. The United Nations must accept full responsibility for seeing that any armistice agreement was respected, said the letter.

A Communist correspondent at the talks said the Communist High Command was insisting on a “guarantee” that the Allies could prevent South Korea from violating the truce. The correspondent told Allied press representatives at Panmunjon that such a guarantee by the United Nations was all that was holding up the truce.