Chinese Opposition To Soviet Peace Drive?

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29067, 2 December 1959, Page 17

Chinese Opposition To Soviet Peace Drive?

Press AssocuUion—CopvrWht) (Rec. 10 p.m.) NEW YORK, December 1. Communist China’s accelerated anti-Americanism might represent opposition to Mr Khrushchev’s peace offensive, London experts on Communist affairs said today, according to United Press International. The experts interpreted the week-end consular clashes in Bombay as an indication that the Communists in China wanted to “keep the pot boiling” in spite of Mr Khrushchev’s apparent willingness to ease cold war tensions.

These experts believed officials in Peking feared that China would be “left out in the cold” if there should be any genuine improvement to Soviet-American relations.

Communist diplomats to London were dropping hints that Mr Khrushchev soon would insist on the inclusion of Communist China in future summit talks, the agency reported. Mr Khrushchev was known to be under heavy pressure from Peking and there had been reports in diplomatic circles that the Chinese Communist leader, Mr Mao Tse-tung, might try to torpedo the forthcoming summit talks, the news agency said. Communist sources said Mr Khrushchev would not raise the Chinese Communist issue immediately, since President Eisenhower could not be expected to agree to sit down at a conference table with the Chinese leader. “Kind of Fiction” In New Delhi, Mr Nehru told the Indian Parliament that there seemed to be “some kind of fic-

tion" in the contradictory accounts of the incident. He said the Indian Government had asked both the United States and Communist Chinese Embassies to see to it that both principals in the case remained in India pending an investigation of the incident H? was referring to American protests that a clerk in its Bombay Consulate - General. Marine Sergeant Robert Armstrong, had last Friday been forcibly detained and maltreated by the Chinese after a Chinese Consulate member, Chang Chien-yu, had applied for political asylum.

The Chinese have laid a' coun-ter-charge that Mr Chang was kidnapped by the Americans and that Sergeant Armstrong chased him with a knife outside the Chinese building. Mr Nehru said: "All this sounds more like some piece of fiction than reality. It is extraordinary that such things should happen.” He revealed that the Chinese Ambassador in New Delhi (Mr Pan Tzu-li) had called at the External Affairs Ministry this morning and lodged a complaint. Mr Nehru said the allegations and counter-allegations were serious charges and were being investigated by Bombay police. “Kidnapping and the detention of a foreign national is clearly outside the functions of a’ Con-sulate-General, and the complaint will have to be investigated.” Mr Nehru said the American and Chinese statements contradicted each other, and it was difficult to say at present which was correct.