DEADLOCK AT PANMUNJON

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27206, 25 November 1953, Page 11

DEADLOCK AT PANMUNJON

Plans For Peace Conference (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

(Rec. 11 p.m.) SEOUL, November 24, United Nations and Communist subcommittees discussing the composition, time and place for the Korean peace conference met again to day in a further effort to break the deadlock. The chief Allied delegate, Mr Arthur Dean, opposed the Communist demand that neutral nations, including Russia, should be represented at the conference. Mr Dean told the Communists yesterday that the Allies would approve Russia’s participation in the peace conference, but not as a neutral.

The sub-committee discussing when the conference will start has so far made no progress at all. Mr Dean told the Communists today that Panmunjon was not worth consideration as a site for the peace conference. The Communists have proposed Panmunjon and insist that neutrals attend the conference. Mr Dean ridiculed a Communist suggestion that the Soviet Union should be classified as a neutral. He repeated Allied accusations that Russia supplied materials of war to the Communist forces in Korea.

He suggested San Francisco, Honolulu, Geneva, Stockholm, Rome and Rio de Janiero as sites for the conference. “If you don’t like them, I will add Oslo or Lisbon. All you do is jeer at the cities we suggest and offer us the mud flats of Panmunjon.” Mr Dean said. After the meeting, Mr Dean said they had made “tortoise progress. We are smoking them out gradually, but I s(till don’t quite understand what they proposed,’’ he said.