N.Z. Delegate Supports Australia’s Korean Stand

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27339, 3 May 1954, Page 9

N.Z. Delegate Supports Australia’s Korean Stand

(2V.Z.P.Z. —Reuter—Copyright)

GENEVA, April 30. The New Zealand Minister of External Affairs and representative at the Far East conference (Mr T. C. Webb) said in an interview that there should be a “genuine effort" to examine the North Korean proposals for national elections. He supported the view of Australia’s delegate (Mr Casey) given in a speech . to the conference yesterday. Mr Webb was to have spoken this week in the general session of the conference, but in common with several other delegates he refrained, to allow the conference to reach the vital committee stage sooner.

Mr Webb supported Mr Casey in declining to reject out of hand the plan advanced on Tuesday by General Nam 11, the North Korean Foreign Minister, for a joint Commission to be set up by the two Korean Parliaments to plan all-Korean elections. Like Mr Casey, he thought that the South Koreans should drop their objections to all-Korean elections, which they oppose on the grounds that elections should be held only in the north, where there has been no United Nations supervision of polls. “Not Rejected Out of Hand”

Mr Webb said: "For tactical reasons, if for no other, I feel that the special proposals of General Nam 11, the only specific proposals as yet before the conference, ought not to be rejected out of hand. We should demonstrate our objectivity by giving these proposals serious study, though at the outset it is obvious that they need much clarification.” Mr Webb said: “Our interpretation at present is naturally influenced by our knowledge of the Communist proposals at Berlin for the reunification of Germany, to which the North Korean plan bears a striking resemblance. “These proposals, as the Western Foreign Ministers exposed in argument with Mr Molotov at Berlin, were phony, and designed to produce a Communist-dominated Germany. Likewise, the same design seems to run through the North Korean proposals, but it is too early to take this for granted. We are in Geneva to negotiate the settlement of problems which are at present unsolved and which prevent the establishment of real peace in the Far East and which, if left unsolved, could lead us into a third world war. “There is so much at stake that we must make a genuine effort to see whether the Communists really desire a detente, what their minimum terms are and whether those terms can be reconciled with ours." Mr Webb said he appreciated the South Korean position. The South

Korean Government was the Government of a sovereign independent State. It had faithfully conducted elections on the lines approved by the United Nations and was the only recognised legal Government in Korea. It had been the subject of brutal aggressiqn and South' Koreans, whose lives and existence were at stake, were naturally suspicious of any change they were asked to accept. “If Korean unity is to be achieved, however, there must be some give and take. The question is one of method. It would be asking a very great deal of the Government of South Korea to merge its identity in some wider legislative body, but if other points of difference can be resolved I do not think the fact that this

Government is already in existence should prove to be an insurmountable obstacle.”

Mr Casey represented the viewpoint which was shared by New Zealand when he expressed the hope that the South Korean Government would agree to the holding of elections under impartial international supervision throughout Korea.