RUSSIAN ATTACKS ON S. KOREA ELECTIONS DUBBED “CLAPTRAP”

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22813, 7 December 1948, Page 5

RUSSIAN ATTACKS ON S. KOREA ELECTIONS DUBBED “CLAPTRAP”

MR. FRASER HITS OUT

(11.15 a.m.)

PARIS, Dec. 6

Russia was challenged heatedly in the United Nations today to show that the Soviet-occupied Northern Korea has a free Government.

The N.Z. Prime Minister, Mr. Peter Fraser, led the attack on the Russian-sponsored regime which shut out the United Nations’ observers when they tried to supervise the elections there earlier this year.

The observers were admitted to the American-occupied .southern Korea.

Mr. Fraser told the political committee that, the Russian bloc attacks on the methods used in the elections in the American zone were “claptrap." Thumping the commitle table Mr. Fraser said: "If there is a free Government in North Korea, produce it.’’ He recalled that the United Nations’ commission was barred from entering the Soviet-occupied Northern Korea to supervise the' elections. He called upon the Russians to show that the Northern Korean Government was n democratic Government and not an autocratic Government or a dictatorship.

lions were illegal and held under a wave of terror.

M. Manuilsky, of Sovici Ukraine, and M. K. V. Missclev, of While Russia, declared that the Southern Korean elec.

Mr. Fraser replied: “It is no use giving these flamboyant speeches. There ,is not one scrap of evidence. What we want is proof. The United States cannot be expected to lie down in Southern Korea and take it. Why attack Southern Korea? Why attack the United States?” Mr. Fraser asked the Russian group to tell who saw the elections in Northern Korea and who observed them. “Who knows whether they were not puppets pulled by a siring,” lie said, lie was most concerned over whether the Government of Northern Korea would accept the United Nations’ decisions or treat them with contempt. If the United Nations agreed to the practice of frustration of its decisions, it had better set out of the business.