Diplomatic Corpse

The body first appeared on a sleepy Saturday afternoon in mid-July. A Dutch businessman driving home from work spotted it on the sidewalk outside the house at No. 17 Prince Maurice Lane, a stately residential avenue in The Hague. He stopped. The street was deserted. He ran to the house to get help. No answer. He went next door, asked to use the telephone, and called the police. When he went out to the street again, the body was gone.

From a neighbor, the police learned the reason: four Chinese had emerged from No. 17 and dragged the body inside. Police knew the house well. It had been rented by the Chinese Communists as a residence for their diplomats and official visitors. The cops knocked on the door and shouldered their way inside. There, lying on the floor, was the body--alive. The man appeared to be a Chinese in his late 30s, and he was in intense pain.

Gone Again. Police whisked him off to a hospital, where he was identified as Hsu Tzu-tsai, chief of Red China's nine-man delegation to the International Congress for Welding Technique at the nearby University of Delft. He had a fractured skull. "This man has been maltreated," said the examining doctor, "possibly even tortured."

Suddenly he was gone again. Two Chinese diplomats had loaded him onto a hospital stretcher and carried him to the Chinese mission, where police were powerless to enter. The Dutch Foreign Ministry immediately protested the kidnaping, but got only silence from Charge d'Affaires Li En-chiu. After two days, the protests gave way to an ultimatum that the Chinese release their prisoner. Too late. "I am afraid I cannot help you," Li declared. "Unfortunately, Mr. Hsu died in my office."

Incensed, the Dutch government immediately declared Li persona non grata, gave him 24 hours to leave the country. Amid reports that the murdered Hsu had been trying to defect to the West, Dutch police surrounded the Chinese mission in order to question any of his fellow welding delegates who might try to leave. None did.

A Ton of Rice. In Peking, the Chinese Foreign Ministry fired off angry protests, then in retaliation for the "unjustified and shameful" expulsion of Diplomat Li, ordered Dutch Charge d'Affaires G. J. Jongejans to leave Red China. It was a hollow ouster, for Peking cops promptly took up positions outside the Dutch legation in order to keep Jongejans a prisoner until the welders in The Hague were released. The whole affair, railed the enraged Chinese, had nothing at all to do with kidnaping, but really involved a malicious plot by the CIA and reflected "Dutch government support of the anti-China policy of U.S. imperialists."

At week's end, the nasty little diplomatic crisis showed no sign of abating. Dutch Charge d'Affaires Jongejans was still a prisoner in his own legation. And rather than submit to questioning by Dutch police, the eight Chinese welders ordered in a truckload of groceries, including a ton of rice, enough to last them for months.

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