Both Sides Oppose Plan For Formosa Area Cease-Fire

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27563, 21 January 1955, Page 11

Both Sides Oppose Plan For Formosa Area Cease-Fire

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) HONG KONG, January 20. Both Chinese Nationalist and Communist newspapers in Hong Kong have strongly condemned proposals for a cease-fire in the Formosa area. One Nationalist newspaper today described the proposal made first by Mr Dulles and repeated yesterday by President Eisenhower as “an atomic bomb against Free China.” Communist newspapers yesterday said the cease-fire proposal was “a peace manoeuvre.” They said Mr Dulles had made the statement obviously in an attempt to appease the United States Congress.

One pro-Nationalist newspaper, “Sing Tao Jih Pao,” said a truce in the Formosa area would be “a thousand times more disastrous” than the Communist seizure of Yikiangshan Island, the “front door” of the Nation-alist-Held Tachen Island group of the southern coast of China’s Chekiang province.

Two days ago Communist forces from Toumen overran Yikiangshan, a three-mile square outpost guarding the approaches to the Tachen group. “Sing Tao Jih Pao” said Mr Eisenhower and Mr Dulles, by the cease-fire proposal, had disheartened Nationalist China. It constituted “an overture to international political intrigue.”

A cease fire would restrict the activities of the Nationalists and was “a bad omen to the free world.”

“The results of the cease fires in Korea and Indo-China have proved disastrous to these two countries,” it said.

“Now the United proposed another cease fire in Formosa while Nationalist China was ready to launch a counter-attack on the China mainland. This action of the United States is equivalent to pushing her friend to a volcano or stabbing in the back dozens of times,” the newspaper wrote. “Cowardice and hesitation on the part of the United States Government had led to the fall of a number of Nationalist outpost islands. The Right-wing newspaper, “Wah Kiu Yat Po,” said the Communists attacked Yikiangshan to test American refection to the recently signed United States-Nationalist China Mutual • Security Pact.

The official Nationalist mouth-piece, “Hong Kong Times” said that Nationalist China would not consider Mr Dulles’s cease-fire proposal in the Formosa area. <