Eliminating Apprehensions

At the first meetings of the new armistice talks it was clear that the road to a settlement was not going to be a downhill ride.

When the Red delegation, led by North Korea's dapper and durable Nam Il, and the U.N. delegation, led by Lieut. General William K. Harrison, sat down in the conference hut at Panmunjom, the atmosphere was cold, correct and businesslike. There were no smiles, no nods, no handshakes. There had been prior agreement that prisoners willing to go home should be repatriated after a ceasefire, that others should be placed in custody of a neutral nation pending final disposition. Beyond that, there was no progress.

Nam II & Co. rejected Switzerland as a suitable neutral custodian, apparently on no other ground than that the U.N.'s espousal of Switzerland ("a neutral status," Harrison said, "which is obviously unsurpassed") rendered that country unacceptable to the Reds.

They rejected the U.N.'s proposal of a 60-day custody period, claiming that six months might be needed to persuade the North Koreans and Chinese that it was safe to go home. They rejected the U.N.'s suggestion that the neutral custodian should take over its charges in Korea, insisted that prisoners must be transported to the neutral country.

The truce talks had been resumed only because the Communists had promised to be more conciliatory on the subject of forced repatriation. But a revealing sentence of Nam Il's showed how unchanging their position really is. "The apprehensions of the P.W.s about the question of their own repatriation," said he, "can only be eliminated after an appropriate time and after explanations are made to them by the side concerned." In other words, the whole purpose of postponing their release and of putting them in neutral custody is to give the Communists (and the Communists alone) a chance to "eliminate" their "apprehensions."

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