Word: malik
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Opportunity? The world promptly started to buzz with truce talks. In Oslo, where he was vacationing, U.N. Secretary General Trygve Lie delightedly and uncritically pounced on the Malik statement. Said Lie: "The first step . . . must be a cease-fire." The "ceasefire should involve only the military arrangements necessary to stop the fighting and to insure against its renewal . . . The political issues involved . . . can then be appropriately discussed in the competent organs...
Canada's Lester Pearson, longtime crusader for cease-fire (and for admitting Communist China to the U.N.) suggested that it would be a "great mistake" not to follow up Malik's move. French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman saw in Malik's speech a "positive element" that would permit opening negotiations...
Washington was openly skeptical. Declared the State Department: "If Mr. Malik's broadcast means that the Communists are now willing to end the aggression ... we are . . . ready . . . But the tenor of Mr. Malik's speech again raises the question as to whether this is more than propaganda...
Trap? Propaganda or not, Mr. Malik had started something, and Washington was generally convinced he had done so because Moscow-to say nothing of China -is being hurt by the way the war in Korea is going; by its strain on Russian materiel and rear-area manpower, it has become a heavy drain on Russian prestige-and perhaps is a hindrance to other ventures. Yet obviously Moscow and Peking still hope to stop the fighting on their own terms. The terms as last stated by Peking: 1) withdrawal of all "foreign" troops from Korea, which evidently would not include...
...Malik's proposal for armistice at the 38th parallel, with the rest of the issues to be taken up at the conference table, included an obvious trap for the U.N. If the proposal were adopted, U.N. forces would be pinned down in Korea as long as the Russians wanted to talk. There would be no guarantee that peace would ever be achieved or that the Chinese would not resume the fighting when it suited them...