Eyes East

Like a great camera panning across the world, the diplomatic eyes of the U.S. shifted to the Far East. Amid the waning echoes of the Big Four conference at Geneva, a simultaneous announcement crackled out of Washington and Peking: ambassadors of the U.S. and Communist China would meet this week in Geneva to discuss "the matter of repatriation of civilians* who desire to return to their respective countries [and to] ... facilitate further discussions and settlement of certain other practical matters."

Off to the discussions at Geneva went Red China's Ambassador to Communist Poland, Wang Ping-nan, 47, a protege of wily Premier Chou Enlai. From the U.S., after firm final guidance from Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, went Ambassador Ural Alexis Johnson, 46, able career diplomat and specialist on northeast Asia. This will be no glare-bathed conference on general principles like the Parley at the Summit; chances are that it will be a long, quiet conference grinding away at details.

Getting the Tone. What details? What "other practical matters"? In his press conference last week, Dulles in effect listed three of the broad objectives. The U.S. wants Red China to 1) agree to adopt the U.S. principle of "no recourse to force," 2) order its marauding pilots to stop shooting down peaceful Western planes, and 3) join the U.S. in examining the possibility of ceasefire in the Formosa Strait. Should the parley at the base camp progress smoothly, Dulles might later be prepared to meet Chou Enlai.

As the ambassadors arrived in Geneva, Chou tested with his pitch pipe and sent forth the soft tone which has become so popular in the Kremlin. Said he to a Communist Party Congress in Peking: "The number of American civilians in China is small and their question can be easily settled . . . The Chinese people hope that the countries of Asia and the Pacific region, including the U.S., will sign a pact of collective peace."

But a sampling of Peking's press and radio comment showed that Red China was already picturing the Little Two parley as a pathway towards its traditional objectives: 1) surrender of Formosa, 2) membership for Red China in the U.N., 3) "strict fulfillment of the 1954 Geneva treaty on Indo-China," meaning that South Viet Nam must be surrendered in July 1956 by the device of rigged and improperly supervised elections. Communist propagandists suggested that if the U.S. persisted in stalling, Red China might have to make a show of force against the vulnerable offshore islands.

Don't Forget. From the Chinese Nationalists, who want the U.S. to fight the Chinese Communists rather than talk to them, came a bitter and anguished reaction. They feared that conference would mean concession. Cried the Nationalist daily Chi Yin of Hong Kong: "What lies in our future is dark, despicable and possibly sellout days."

All week long U.S. diplomats, in Washington and Taipei, reassured the Nationalists and others who shared their forebodings that the U.S. still holds to a firm position: it will sacrifice no land and no principle to reach an accommodation with Red China. The talks that begin this week at Geneva, proposed by the U.S. on July 11 after a number of overtures from the Chinese Communists, are what the State Department's Asia-wise hands have wanted: limited talks between the U.S. and Red China at the ambassadorial level, without an Indian or a Briton or a Burmese sitting by and attempting to be a broker.

"We have created none of the conditions which resulted in tensions with China," said one U.S. official last week. "So what concessions could we make? Don't forget, the Chinese Communists are the ones holding Americans illegally . . . They're still the same kind of people."

This week, taking a step they should have taken long before, the Chinese announced that they would release the eleven U.S. airmen they had held illegally since January, 1953. Their 6-29 had been shot down during a leaflet dropping mission over North Korea and the Chinese had sentenced them to terms up to ten years for "spying."

* Red China illegally holds at least 39 U.S. citizens in its jails. In addition to eleven U.S. airmen, the known prisoners are 20 missionaries, four businessmen, two students, two civilian employees of the U.S. Army. Red China holds twelve more U.S. citizens by not granting them exit permits. The U.S. said last April that it would grant exit visas to 76 Chinese students who wanted to leave the U.S. and go home to Communist China; about 30 have already left.

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