Toward an Agenda

After three days during which the Reds made up their minds to yield to U.N. demands (see col. 2), the negotiators were back at their conference table. The Kaesong talks went on behind an enclosure of barbed wire and strictest secrecy, but the Communists broadcast to the world their conditions for a ceasefire: P:The opposing armies to withdraw to a distance of ten kilometers (about 6.2 miles) north and south of the 38th parallel; P:The 12 1/2-mile-wide strip thus created across the peninsula to be under the civil administration of the North and South Korean governments; P:Prisoners to be exchanged; P: All "foreign troops" to withdraw from Korea in "the shortest possible time."

This set of terms is clearly unacceptable to the U.N. Item: it would cause the U.N. forces to give up substantial ground already won. Item: it provides no machinery, e.g., mutual inspection, to make sure that the truce is kept. Item: to withdraw from Korea under any circumstances "in the shortest possible time" would be to leave South Korea to the mercy of the Communists once again.

The U.N. kept officially silent about the Red proposals, but in an unguarded moment, Rear Admiral Arleigh ("31-Knot") Burke implied that the U.N. had refused at the first meeting to discuss withdrawal of troops from Korea. Reason: that is a political matter, and the discussions are limited to military matters leading only to an armistice. Meanwhile, the U.N. is on record with its minimum truce conditions:

P:A cease-fire with enforcement provisions;

P:A 20-mile-deep buffer zone between the opposing forces, roughly along the present U.N.-held line, requiring the Communists to move back; P: An international commission with full power of inspection in North Korea; P:No further shipments of war material or "volunteers" to Korea.

This week the U.N. command reported progress at Kaesong toward an agenda. Once the agenda gets written, the real struggle of the conference will begin.

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