Baited Hook

It was the longest speech (3 hr. 39 min.) ever made to U.N. members in General Assembly history, but all Russia's Andrei Vishinsky had to say was summed up in a 97-word proposed resolution: the job of bringing an end to the war in Korea should be handed over to a U.N. commission composed of "the parties directly concerned." This meant, obviously, North and South Korea, the U.S. and some, or all, of the U.N. allies; but would it also include Red China and Russia? Mr. Vishinsky did not say.

Vague about the shape of the commission, he was specific on its main problem: repatriation of prisoners of war--said to be the crucial problem holding up agreement at Panmunjom. "The question at issue is one of the free expression of will by prisoners," he said, "but such free expressions are not likely in prison camp conditions under the muzzles of machine guns." Russia took its stand beside the Geneva Convention of 1949 (the U.S. did not sign), which provides for the repatriation of prisoners "without any reservations or restrictions."

In his speech on Korea five days earlier, Dean Acheson had quoted from 15 treaties made between 1918 and 1921 in which the Soviet Union had agreed to voluntary repatriation of prisoners of war. Vishinsky last week denounced them as having been "imposed on the young and weak Soviet state by its strong enemies," but he did not deny the voluntary repatriation principle as it applied in some of the treaties-- e.g., the non-return of British soldiers, captured during the 1917 Civil War, who decided to stay in the new Soviet state. In Vishinsky's formal proposal, some French observers saw hope of an eventual compromise. Others saw it for what it was: a baited hook. At Panmunjom, Red China stands in the background behind the North Korean delegates, but if it got on a U.N. commission, as one of the "parties concerned," its new position would be official recognition, and possibly lead to full U.N. membership. Briskly, Britain's Selwyn Lloyd cut through the Vishinsky verbiage to the core of the problem: "Unless the Soviet Union accepts the principle of non-forcible repatriation, a new commission is useless; if it does accept it, a new commission is unnecessary."

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