New China Sees “No Need For Despair” Over Korea

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27369, 7 June 1954, Page 9

New China Sees “No Need For Despair” Over Korea

(Rec. 8.40 p.m.) GENEVA, June 5. Mr Chou En-lai, the Chinese Communist Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, said today that there was “much common ground” between the East and the West over deciding Korea’s future.

Mr Chou told the 19-nation Korean conference: “We should surely not despair of reaching a settlement.” He proposed that All-Korean elections should be supervised by a neutral commission like the one now supervising the Korean armistice, which is drawn from Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Mr Chou again insisted that United

Rations supervision was “untenable” and renewed his demands for all foreign troops to be withdrawn before the country went to the polls. The West insists on the United Nations supervising All-Korean elections. It has strongly criticised Communist “obstruction” in the Korean Supervisory Commifton. * The Chinese proposals contained three new factors—ythat the present supervisory commission should control the elections; a firm acceptance of the thesis that Northern and Southern representation in the new parliament should be in line with their population; and a proposal for agreement at the Far Eastern conference on the withdrawal of foreign troops from Korea, this apparently not to be dependent on political agreement. Mr Chou admitted that the Korean: commission had met “some difficulties,” but he declared: “Since an international organisation such as the Neutrel Nations Supervisory Commission is able to supervise the implementation of the Korean armistice agreement, there is no reason whatever why it cannot carry out appropriate supervision over free elections throughout Korea.” Both Mr Chou and General Nam 11, the North Korean Foreign Minister,, who spoke before him at today’s thirteenth plenary session, formally rejected the 14-point South Korean plan for United Nations supervision of the elections. « South Korea’s Insistence South Korea, backed by the United States and several other countries on the United Nations side, insists that only the United Nations can supervise the elections. None of the Western delegations believes' that the President, Dr Syngman Rhee, can be induced to change his mind. According to American sources, the United States will not even try to persuade him to do so. Other countries, including the British Commonwealth group, are prepared to drop their demand for United Nations supervision in favour of an agreed panel of countries which did not take part in the Korean war. Mr Chou went out of his way to pick on the anxiety of many United Nations allies to withdraw their troops from Korea even if it proves impossible to

reach agreement on the country’s reunification. He drove his point home by quoting from speeches made earlier by British, New Zealand and Australian delegations expressing a common desire to ■. evacuate thfeir forces.

The Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Molotov, said today that the conference should agree on five basic principles for peaceful settlement of the Korean problem. These principles were:— (1) All-Korea free elections to establish a united, independent and democratic nation. (2) The formation of an All-Korean body of representatives of both sides to prepare and carry out these elections. (3) The withdrawal of all foreign troops within a definite time limit before the elections. (4) The formation of an international commission to supervise

(5) The nations most interested in maintaining peace in the Far East should assume the obligations of guaranteeing Korea’s peaceful development and thus help Korean reunification. American Reply The leader of the delegation, Mr Walter Bedell Smith, later described Communist proposals for a united Korea as an attempt “to establish a kind of super-government in- which the Communists would have the power actually to frustrate any effort to achieve honest elections.” The proposals were fraudulent, he said, because they pretended, to. establish an international body which could do absolutely nothing, so long as the control of the entire election procedure was in the All-Korean commission in which the Communists have their built-in veto. Of the neutral commission, he commented: “The bitter experience we have had with such a body in the Korean armistice has given us a lesson we will not soon forget. At this very time the aggressors in Korea are bringing arms and reinforcements into North Korea .under conditions strictly prohibited by the armistice—and the supervisory commission is impotent to check these violations, because the Communist members of the commission refuse to permit it to act.” Prince Wan, of Siam, who presided, said that the next meeting would be arranged by informal consultation, The delegates of the opposing French Union and rebel Vtetminh High Commands in Indo-China talked in secret, for more than three and a half hours today on the details of a cease fire to end the seven-year-old war. It was their fourth meeting since they were ordered to study the disposition of forces after a cease fire, beginning with the regrouping areas in Vietnam. The High Command representatives will meet again on Monday.