TREATY WITH FORMOSA

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27556, 13 January 1955, Page 9

TREATY WITH FORMOSA

Wisdom Doubted By Democrats

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11-50 pan.) NEW YORK, Jan. 12. A private memorandum circulated by the Democratic Party’s National Committee questioned the wisdom of Senate ratification off the United States Mutual Defence Treaty with Nationalist China, James Reston reported in the “New York Times” today. The memorandum, said Reston, who is chief Washington correspondent of the newspaper, was drafted after consultation with some of the most prominent foreign affairs experts in the party. It did not directly urge defeat of the treaty. But it suggested that ratification would. do more to embarrass than to aid the United States in protecting its vital interests in Formosa and the Pescadores. The memorandum mentioned the following questions:

The vital importance to the United States of having Formosa and the Pescadores remain in friendly hands. The policy of defending these islands from unprovoked armed attack. On this premise the memorandum then made these points: Ratification of the treaty, already requested by President Eisenhower, would for the first time constitute a formal recognition of Formosa and the Pescadores as territories of the Republic of China.

Such formal recognition would give substance to the claim of the Chinese Communists that an armed attack on these islands was not intended on their part, but was a civil war, in which the right and purpose of other nations forcibly to intervene would be open to serious doubt.

The United States, in defence of its interests in peace and in Formosa and the Pescadores, should be working to separate these islands from the mainland, not taking action that would tie them up legally. “Most of our friends and allies,” the memorandum added, “want to have peace, not war, in the Straits of Formosa. It would probably be possible to evoke wide support in the United Nations and throughout the free world for the calling of a cease fire by the United Nations in the Straits of Formosa.

“It would therefore seem to be in the interest of the United States to separate Formosa and the Pescadores from the power struggle for control of the mainland of China and to base our position on the United Nations Charter, which forbids the use of force in international relations and calls for peaceful settlement of international disputes and the right of self-deter-mination.”

Reston said that State Department officials said they were surprised that ratification of the treaty was being questioned, and said that they would be sorry to see the treaty involved in any partisan controversy on Capitol Hill.