Mission to Peking

At 5 a.m. one day last week, the telephone awakened Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary-General of the United Nations. An aide told him that the Chinese Communists would welcome him to their capital. Delighted, Hammarskjold got ready for a journey on which he will seek the release of 15 Americans captured during the Korean war.

The U.N. Assembly, by a vote of 47 to 5, had denounced the Reds for holding prisoners in violation of the Korean truce agreement. Immediately, Hammarskjold shot off a cable seeking an audience in Peking "soon after Dec. 26th" with Red China's Premier and Foreign Minister, Chou Enlai. For six days no reply came, other than bitter and belligerent Radio Peking broadcasts. On the seventh day Chou answered adroitly, with, two almost simultaneous cables.

"Peace & Relaxation." In one cable Communist Chou angrily denounced the U.S. for "seizing" Formosa and "manufacturing" a mutual-security treaty with the Nationalists there (TIME, Dec. 13). "To convict foreign spies caught in China is China's internal affair," he said coldly. "There is no justification at all for the United Nations to try to interfere. . . No amount of clamor on the part of the U.S. can shake China's just stand of exercising its own sovereign rights.''

Chou's other cable, sent first, referred Hammarskjold to the later message for "the case of the U.S. spies." However, Chou continued cordially: "In the interests of peace and relaxation of international tensions, I am prepared to receive you in our capital, Peking, to discuss with you pertinent questions. We welcome you to China."

Chou's double cable talk made sense--for the Communists. Obviously, he wanted to cut off any discussion of the captured Americans--the purpose of Hammarskjold's trip. At the same time, he was glad to receive the U.N. chief as an envoy to his capital, and determined to discuss broader issues than the fate of the 15 flyers.

After he got Chou's cables, Hammarskjold flew to Stockholm to join the Swedish Academy of Letters (replacing his late father, Hjalmar Hammarskjold, Sweden's World War I Premier). While there, he lunched with Keng Piao, Red China's ambassador in Stockholm, to make practical arrangements for the trip and perhaps to set up a deal with Keng Piao's master. He is scheduled to return to the U.N. briefly this week, to leave shortly after Christmas for the 12,000-mile flight to Peking's marble halls and flinty masters.

A Comeback Try. For the captured Americans, Hammarskjold can offer very little in exchange. He is authorized neither to make concessions to Red China nor to negotiate broad issues. He might, perhaps, be able to arrange an exchange of the U.N. prisoners for those few Chinese students (out of 5,000 stranded in the U.S. when China fell to the Reds) who want to return home. The U.S. has with held exit permits to 35 Chinese, because of their studies in such sensitive fields as radar and physics, but indicated last week its readiness for an exchange similar to wartime transfers of interned aliens.

What Chou obviously has in mind is a much bigger deal--or at least a propaganda maneuver in which the Communists can turn their loss of prestige in the U.N. vote into a discussion of Red China's entry into the U.N.

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