Et Cetera

At Panmunjom last week, the frozen furrows of the millet field around the truce talks tent softened to the first thaw of the new year. The cold features of North Korea's General Nam II were also a degree or two warmer. For the first time since the resumption of the truce talks last fall, the Communist negotiator brought along with him, in his shiny black Chrysler, a proposition that seemed to offer an acceptable formula on an important issue.

The question before the tent was what the military commanders of both sides should recommend to their governments for joint discussion, after a truce is effected. Hitherto the Communists have been demanding that any settlement of the Korean question must also include settlement of Formosa and U.N. recognition of Red China. Now Nam simply proposed that a high-level political conference be held, within three months of signing the armistice, "by representatives appointed respectively to settle . . . the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea, a peaceful settlement of the Korean question, et cetera."

Chief U.N. Negotiator Vice Admiral Charles Turner Joy took a hard look at the text of Nam's proposal. He has learned to be as skeptical of Nam plausible as of Nam bellicose. In brevity and tone the Nam proposal was businesslike, but the little phrase "et cetera" could hide a mess of Communist chicanery. Admiral Joy decided that he would buy Nam's 79-word proposal--if his interpretation of it was correct. Was he right in thinking that the appointed "representatives" would include the Republic of South Korea? (Yes, said Nam.) Would the "foreign forces" to be withdrawn include the Chinese "volunteers"? What exactly did the Communists mean by "et cetera"? Nam asked for time out to look at Joy's interpretation.

There still remained two major truce issues to be settled: 1) the Communist right to build airfields during the armistice, 2) the right of prisoners of war on both sides to voluntary repatriation.

Those whose business it is at Panmunjom to raise a moistened finger to the wind and test the weather detected some signs of clearing skies last week. Pessimists read the signs another way: whenever the West becomes too restive over Chinese stalling, the Chinese become briefly conciliatory, and the talk goes on & on & on.

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