October 29, 1952
MEMORANDUM OF CONVERSATION
PARTICIPANTS: Madame Pandit Secretary Acheson
I called upon Madame Pandit at my request. I briefly mentioned two matters.
Korea. I said that it was difficult to say much about this matter until we had heard from Mr. Vishinsky's speech. She said that she agreed with that and she would like to talk with me again later on.
I said that there had been rumors attributed to members of her delegation of a plan to slur over the prisoner of war question in the armistice agreement and rely upon the fact that in administering the repatriation a neutral group would be able to exclude from repatriation those as to whom force would be necessary. I said that this was, I thought, a most dangerous idea. In the first place, the issue could not be slurred over, because public opinion in a great many countries would require its clarification, and, secondly, to have armistice terms which were unclear and which would lead to charges of bad faith and breaches of the armistice would raise the gravest questions of resumption of hostilities under circumstances which would make that most serious indeed.
Mme. Pandit purported to know nothing of such rumors and to understand the point which I had made. She said that, if Mr. Vishinsky made a purely propaganda speech, offering no new ideas, she thought that our resolution might be one to which her delegation could agree, provided that some editorial changes were made which removed an implication, which she thought was now in it; i.e., that the General Assembly was approving all actions of the Command, including all the bombings. I said that this criticism
- 2 -
rather surprised me, but that I would look at the resolution again. I thought that it had been drafted in such a way as to permit all those who agreed with us on the principle of no forced repatriation to concur in the resolution regardless of what other differences they might have with us.
On Tunisia, I said that I knew she wished to have a moderate and helpful discussion rather than more forensics, and that the only hope to bring this about lay in not inserting inflammatory and useless procedural questions. I thought such a one would be a motion to invite North Africans to come to the General Assembly. There was nothing which they could add and I thought such a motion would probably destroy any chance there might be of inducing the French to talk about the merits of the problems. She agreed that the presence of such people would not help and said she would discuss with her delegation the matter of helping in dissuading others from precipitating the issue.
We agreed that should the press inquire about our meeting (and she said their press representative had already had an inquiry from some newspaper person) that we would say that my call was purely a social one upon a former Ambassador to the United States and that she expected to return it by calling on Mrs. Acheson and me.