TALKS ON KOREA EXPECTED TO END SOON IN FAILURE

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27375, 14 June 1954, Page 9

TALKS ON KOREA EXPECTED TO END SOON IN FAILURE

(Rec. 8 p.m.) GENEVA, June 12. The Korean conference has ended for all practical purposes, in the view of most non-Communist delegations at Geneva.

The talks are expected to be broken off formally early next week after the two sides Xave made closing statements on their positions. The British Foreign Secretary (Mi Eden) told the Korean conference yesterday that no real progress had been made to bridge the differences over free elections and United Nations authority. He said that if the conference had to admit failure, that fact should be reported to the United Nations. This would ensure that while the existing armistice remained in force, the search for a political settlement could be resumed whenever the right moment came.

On the question of United Nations authority, Mr Eden said: “The League of Nations failed because it could not act upon its principles. The United Nations have shown in Korea that they can successfully defend victims against aggressors. Now, since the armistice has been concluded under their authority, the United Nations are more closely concerned than ever with a peaceful solution of the Korean question.

“It has been said in this room that this conference had nothing to do with the United Nations. I, cannot accept that.” Mr Eden rejected the Communist contention that the United Nations had lost its moral authority and competence to deal impartially with the Korean problem. The leader of the New Zealand delegation, Mr A. D. Mclntosh, told the conference that his Government viewed with deep concern and disappointment the failure of the talks to arrive at some common basis on which to begin serious negotiations. “It is now abundantly clear,” said Mr Mclntosh, “that the spirit of give and take which is an essential pre--1 requisite for any negotiation, is wholly

lacking. How can we, on our side, be expected to consider any further compromise in a means of settlement when We have been shown no movement on issues vital to the cause the members of the United Nations have pledged themselves to uphold—a cause for which their people have sacrificed their lives?

“We agree that elections are the best way of determining the will of the people of Korea, that these elections should be conducted on .the basis of a secret ballot and universal suffrage, and that they should be impartially supervised. We agree that foreign forces should be withdrawn, that the integrity of the new Korea should be guaranteed,” said Mr Mclntosh.

“But what service do we give to the people of Korea, and to the people of the world, in declaring these things again from this conference, when we know that there is fundamental disagreement, not only about the method of translating these principles into reality, but even about the meaning of the principles themselves? “Even the same words have different meanings—according to which of us use them.” Mr Mclntosh said that because New Zealand regarded a Korean settlement as vital to peace in the Far East, its delegation had studied with great care the speeches by Mr Molotov, Mr Chou En-lai, and General Nam 11.

“There is a great deal with which we agree in the words and proposals contained in those speeches,” he said. “It is never difficult to agree with general principles and wide aims, but some years of experience have taught the free world to look for realities behind the words and principles. “Governments, like individuals, no longer trustingly sign declarations of general principles such as one finds on manifestos or peace petitions. They study them, as they must, in the context, , and their historical perspective. “It is in the context of the speeches, spread over six weeks, and the historical perspective of the attempts to unify Korea, of aggression upon Korea, and of the implementation of the armistice agreement that the New Zealand Government has studied Mr Molotov’s request that the conference declare its agreement upon certain principles which are basic to any Korean settlement.” Mr Mclntosh described both the commissions proposed by the Communists for all-Korean elections as unsatisfactory. Mr Mclntosh said that the “faults of the proposed all-Korean commission have already been thoroughly exposed.”