Shooting in the Yellow Sea

Trygve Lie's telephone in New York City's suburban Forest Hills jangled in the small hours. On the line, as he had been in the small hours of June 25, was fast-moving Ernest A. Gross, deputy U.S. representative on the Security Council. This time Ernie Gross had no invasion to report, but his news was potentially as serious. A Russian plane had attacked a Corsair fighter of a U.N. naval force in the Yellow Sea, off Korea's west coast. The plane had been shot down, and the body of a Russian aviator recovered.

Buzz, Buzz. When the Security Council met that afternoon at Lake Success, everyone buzzed busily along the air-conditioned corridors. The chief conjecture: Russia might be about to back the North Koreans openly. But Jacob Malik merely charged that the affair was one more "provocation" by U.S. "warmongers." In Moscow the next day, Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky tried to shift it from a U.N. to a Russo-American affair; he summoned U.S. Ambassador Alan G. Kirk and tried to hand him a note alleging that eleven American warplanes had shot down an unarmed Soviet plane near the Russian naval base of Port Arthur.

Kirk refused to take the message, and said it should be sent direct to U.N. Then the Russians delivered the note to the State Department in Washington by a messenger who spoke no English; it was promptly returned by a messenger who spoke no Russian. When U.N. ruled that the note was in its province, Malik did not challenge the ruling.

Freed from the month-long paralysis of Malik's presidency, the Security Council acted on three resolutions during the week. Warren Austin argued that the shooting in the Yellow Sea made it more urgent than ever to adopt the U.S. resolution condemning North Korea for its "continued defiance" of U.N. and calling on "all states to refrain from assisting or encouraging the North Korean authorities and to refrain from action which might lead to the spread of the Korean conflict."

Austin's earlier report to U.N. made it clear that the twin-engined Soviet bomber had not so refrained: it had "passed over a screening ship and continued toward the center of the United Nations formation in a hostile manner. The bomber opened fire upon a United Nations fighter patrol, which returned its fire and shot it down." A U.N. destroyer fished the airman from the sea. His identification papers showed that he was Lieut. Gennady Vasilievich Mishin, serial number 25054. He was buried at Pusan.

One "No." Austin won a 9-1 vote, but the lone negative by Malik vetoed his proposal. It was Russia's 44th veto in U.N.

Malik's vituperation could not get a single supporter for his resolutions calling for 1) withdrawal of "foreign troops" from Korea, and 2) a condemnation of the U.S. for "inhuman, barbarous bombing."

This week the even more vituperative Vishinsky was on his way to head the Soviet delegation to the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly that opens at Flushing Meadows on Sept. 19. In the Assembly, Soviet slander will be even less effective than in the Security Council. There, the Russians do not have the veto.

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