Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Volume III, Microfiche Supplement, China

665. Letter 48 from McConaughy to Johnson¹

Letter No. 48

Washington, June 25, 1956

Dear Alex:

We have decided to put some pressure on the Indian Ambassador here to proceed with the prisoner interviews. We are calling him in some time today. We plan to hand him a letter signed by Mr. Robertson emphasizing the urgency of the matter in view of the fact that the prisoners were informed some time ago that they would shortly receive a visit. We shall also remind Mehta of the repeatedly expressed Indian interest in the question of Chinese prisoners in this country, and the gratification which Mehta expressed on May 31 when he was informed of our decision. We intend to indicate our belief that the Indians should proceed with the interviews regardless of any inexplicable shift which may have occurred in the attitude of the Chinese Communists. We will let him see that in our view the Indians have an obligation to us and to their own conscience, and that they should not unquestioningly play the Chinese Communist game in this matter against their better judgment. We have an added reason for moving rapidly on this, in that we find that we are on weak grounds in stalling off the GRC on its insistent request to interview the prisoners. Article VI of the Treaty of January 11, 1943 on the relinquishment of extraterritorial rights in China (copy attached) gives the Chinese this right specifically with no conditions attached as to the purpose of the visit. The Chinese are really aroused over this whole question. It has posed some very acute problems for the new Ambassador Hollington Tong. He has done his best to placate Taipei but he feels that the rise of this issue just at the beginning of his Mission, has given him a bad start in Washington. In a letter of June 23 (copy attached) the Chinese indicate that they will take any of the prisoners who wish to go to Taiwan if no Indian representative, or representative of another third country is present, when the wishes of the criminals are ascertained. You will see that there are some possibilities of our getting some good out of the situation even if the Indians let us down. We will do all we can to exploit the position in any event. It has occurred to me that if we cannot use the Indians we might have a representative of the International Red Cross, or the American Red Cross to accompany our representative when the prisoners are interviewed. The International Red Cross would of course be preferable. We expect to send Ralph Clough to interview all the prisoners as the Department’s representative.

You will be interested in a short item in Drew Pearson’s column of June 24:

“Amb. Alex Johnson in Geneva has been instructed to keep talking to the Chinese Communists for another year if necessary, to give the Far East crisis a chance to cool off. Johnson has been talking for almost a year already and he’s now a bit impatient, wondering how much longer he had to listen to Red insults and demands for a meeting with Secretary Dulles. Back came a cable from the State Department last week, telling him to keep talking indefinitely, making no concessions.”

While this does not fully reflect your instructions of last week, it looks to me as if somebody who saw our guidance telegram talked to Pearson. In any event there is a basic leak somewhere and this sort of thing is highly mischievous. It is certain to come to the attention of the Chinese Communists and will probably be given a certain amount of credence by them.

The British Embassy informed us on Saturday that Fathers Clifford and Phillips have received orders from their superiors to leave. They are to take the SS Hamburg from Shanghai to Hong Kong sailing June 29. We are glad that they are leaving.

We have not been able to get anything from General Erskine’s office this morning on Ekvall’s orders. We believe that local interests of the Army Attache in Paris are the only stumbling block since he has all the necessary authorization and the money for Ekvall. It may have been cleared up already. We gave them a copy of your telegram of June 22. We shall continue to press the Pentagon on this until it is completely resolved.

There is no present disposition here for us to take the initiative on tabling any new formulation of the renunciation of force draft. Any change which might recommend itself to Wang would necessarily involve something of a substantive backdown and would imply even more than it literally conveyed. The disposition here is to stand on the April 19 draft.

There is nothing new on the Nehru visit. We have done a short briefing paper on the Geneva talks for the Nehru visit. Copy will be forwarded.

We are pretty hard pressed with Ralph away on two weeks leave. He returns on Wednesday. Regards and good wishes.

Sincerely,

Walter P. McConaughy

Enclosures:

1. Copy of letter from Amb. Tong to Mr. Robertson dated June 23, 1956.

2. Copy of Article VI of the Treaty of Jan. 11, 1943.

1. Source: Department of State, Geneva Talks Files, Lot 72D415. Secret; Official–Informal.