SOLUTION FOR FORMOSA

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28701, 26 September 1958, Page 9

SOLUTION FOR FORMOSA

“Less Pessimism” At UN.

NEW YORK, Sept. 25. Observers noted a decrease in pessimism at United Nations headquarters last night as a report circulated that the United States delegation had been shown a copy of a nine-page memorandum addressed to the Indian Government by the Chinese Communist Premier, Mr Chou En-lai, in which he frankly sought advice on ways of reaching a settlement in the Formosa Strait crisis.

Informants said the memorandum was not couched in bellicose terms. On the contrary it appeared to be rather conciliatory in its emphasis on the search for a peaceful solution. Mr Chou En-lai was reported to have reaffirmed his adherence to the Bandung Declaration on the principles of peaceful coexistence, but was understood to have written on risks inherent in the United States support for the Chinese Nationalists, who, he claimed, were making the Americans tools for their aggressive ambitions.

Mr Selwyn Lloyd, the British Foreign Secretary, will go before the General Assembly today for a major policy speech expected to deal with the Far East crisis.

A Reuter correspondent said Mr Lloyd was thought likely to make these key points:—Force could not be justified for the attainment of communist ends in the Formosa Strait; negotiations must be continued; Britain welcomed American readiness to negotiate, and deplored “Chinese intransigence.” Mr Lloyd’s speech was regarded at United Nations headquarters as having particular significance against the background of efforts reported to be going on to have Chinese-American talks at a much higher level than those now taking place in Warsaw between the ambassadors. India’s Intervention

Mr V. K. Krishna Menon, India’s Defence Minister and delegation leader, was understood to have sought Mr Lloyd’s intervention with the United States to try to bring about such high-level contacts.

While India and a number of other non-committed nations clearly would like to see Mr Dulles meet Mr Chou they might be satisfied if under-secretaries of both sides met.

Mr Robert Murphy, who was given a trouble-shooting assignment in the Middle East this last summer appeared as a possible choice for the United States, according to informants. Mr Lloyd was expected to confer with Mr Dulles again today or tomorrow during the Secretary of State’s visit to New York. In the General Assembly debate yesterday several representatives from small countries in Africa and Asia expressed fear that United States policy in the Formosa Strait might lead to war. Prince Norodon Sihanouk, Premier of Cambodia, said the exclusion of the Peking regime from the United Nations contributes heavily to the present critical situation.

New Judge.— Mr Justice Windeyer was sworn in today as a new Judge of the High Court of Australia. He is the fifth generation of his family to follow the legal profession.—Sydney, September 25.

British opposition to United States policy on the Far East crisis, as reflected by some newspapers, remains firm and /even shows signs of increasing. In a front-page leading article headlined “Ike’s Folly,” the mass circulation “Daily Mirror” said that the whole free world believed that it would be mad for the United States to start a nuclear war over tfle islands of Quemoy and Matsu.

The “Daily Herald” said it believed that Mr Macmillan would be forced to break his “monastic vows of silence” in view of the stand taken by the T.U.C. The “Manchester Guardian” said that the United States Government must by now have a pretty good idea that its Formosa policy had almost no public support in Britain.

“The time is coming when we in Britain ought to be moving forward from regretting the American Government’s folly, to helping it to extricate itself from the quagmire into which it has floundered,” the newspaper said.

After saying that it was becoming obvious that the United States State Department and above all. President Eisenhower, were desperately anxious not to tumble over the brink into war, the “Manchester Guardian” commented: “Opposition to Hr Dulles’s brinkmanship is being consolidated within America.

“At least some of the (American) Governmental restraint and public doubt is due to a realisation by Americans that most of the rest of the world is not with them.”

The “Daily Mirror” in its leading article asked* “Does President Eisenhower realise that American policy over Quemoy is regarded by the rest of the world as insane? “Does Ike realise that John Foster Dulles—the man he most admires now that Sherman Adams has quit—is known outside the White House as ‘Disaster Dulles?’ ”

The “Daily Herald” claimed that the Trades Union Congress had issued one of the most serious warnings in its long history.

“Every trade union branch m the country should now go into action to back the T.U.C.’s declaration. Turn the flow of protests to Downing Street and Westminster into a tidal wave,” it said. “Mr Macmillan will now be forced to break his monastic vows of silence. He will be compelled to answer. Has he done anything to stop the drift to disaster? And, if so, what? Has he told Dulles in words of one syllable that Britain will keep out?”