Solid 16

Almost unnoticed under the overshadowing menace of Indo-China, the conference on Korean unification was broken off last week at Geneva. The Korean talks, from which nothing had been expected by the U.S., had been paralyzed since early May, when Molotov refused the U.N. any role in supervising Korean elections, on the ground that the U.N. was not impartial because it had participated in the Korean war. In warding off Communist proposals--all of which were aimed at preventing free Korean elections--the 16 Korean war allies showed a healthful and effective solidarity.

The 16 signed a statement which was read by Thailand's Prince Wan Waithaya-kon: "We believe that it is better to face the fact of our disagreement [with the Communists] than to raise false hopes and mislead the people of the world into believing that there is agreement when there is none." In the face of this united front, Molotov and Chou En-lai got their signals crossed. Chou, raging, had blamed the U.S. alone for the impending breakoff.

Molotov asserted that all of the anti-Communist belligerents were to blame.

"It is clear," Molotov fumed, "that the 16 had a clear-cut goal--to support and prolong the anti-nationalist, rotten, semi-fascist Syngman Rhee regime." If Communist lamentations are a sign of success, then the Korean breakoff was a success for the West. In the far-off town of Chinhae, South Korea, where he was attending an anti-Communist conference ("Asia for the free Asians"), old Syngman Rhee tilted his intricately sculptured face away from the sun, and smiled at the news from Geneva. "I do not wish," he said to newsmen, "to appear as saying I told you so."

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