No Cease-Fire

No one could remember any single day in U.N. history when there had been as many private talks among the delegates. India's white-thatched Sir Senegal Rau buzzed up & down the corridors at Lake Success, in & out of at least a dozen meetings. Red China and Red Korea had answered Rau's petition for a Communist military halt at the 38th parallel by sending North Korean troops across the parallel (TIME, Dec. 18). India's undeterred envoy now proposed to ask for a ceasefire.

Monroe Doctrine. Next day (Tuesday), with the backing of twelve other Asian and Middle Eastern nations, Sir Benegal read his recommendation to the General Assembly: "The President of the General Assembly to constitute a group of three persons including himself to determine the basis on which a satisfactory cease-fire in Korea can be arranged . . ." He also reported on his four "fairly long" interviews with Red China's Wu Hsiu-chuan. Sample dialogue:

Rau: Does Peking want war with the U.N. or even with the U.S.?

Wu: Most certainly we don't want war, but we find that the forces of the U.S. and the U.N. are carrying out military operations near our border, and so a war has been forced upon our people.

To his U.N. colleagues, Rau commented: "[The Chinese Communists] seem to be moving toward a kind of Monroe Doctrine for China . . ." In the next two days, the Assembly overwhelmingly approved the cease-fire resolution. Only Russia's Jacob Malik objected. He insisted on withdrawal of all U.N. forces from Korea. Ceasefire, he cried, was "merely a camouflage designed to make it possible for American forces to continue . . . their act of armed aggression."

On Friday the Assembly recessed. The session, begun last September, had made the U.N.'s most significant decision since its establishment in 1945, to wit, that the veto-free Assembly could act against aggression whenever a veto blocked the Security Council. But it closed on a note of evasion, not firmness, without applying its new power against flagrant Chinese Communist aggression.

Mao Doctrine. Meanwhile, the ceasefire commissioners--Iran's suave Nasrollah Entezam (Assembly President), Canada's hopeful Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester B. Pearson and India's indefatigable Rau--promptly began work. They spent 2 1/2 hours with U.S. representatives. Red China's Wu refused to meet them. On Saturday, at a press conference attended by 75 newsmen, Wu gave Peking's answer: no ceasefire.

Echoing Russia's Malik, Wu denounced the proposal as "a trap of the U.S. ruling circle." This week, he announced, he would fly back to Peking.

It looked like a final rejection. But Wu left the door open just a crack for a deal (on Peking's terms). "We are also willing," he said cryptically, "to try to advise the Chinese volunteers [in Korea] to bring to an early conclusion the military operations . . . against the U.S. armed forces of aggression." Comrades Mao Tse-tung and Joseph Stalin were plainly not interested in stopping the fighting as long as their side was winning.

Cease-fire Commissioners Rau, Pearson and Entezam fixed their eyes on the door's crack, decided to keep trying this week. They reported that they had sent a cablegram to Peking, offering to meet the Chinese Reds any place they chose, presumably even in their own capital. They still hoped that Wu had not given his side's final answer.

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