No Progress at Panmunjom
A recurrent note of acerbity has distinguished this week's discussions at Panmunjom, where no progress of any kind has been made in any direction. The attitude of the Communist delegates has wavered between the equally uneon- structive alternatives of truculence and what an American officer described as "planned stupidity." The repetition, from the United Nations side, of a reasonable and humane request that all sick and seriously wounded prisoners should be exchanged immediately has met with no response; and on the more obviously controversial issue of airfield construction in North Korea the deadlock appears to be complete. It is clear that, especially in all matters relating to Prisoners, the United Nations delegates have gone out of their way to adapt and readapt their proposals in the light of Communist objections; and it seems quite impossible, either on the spot or from a distance, to interpret coherently Communist policy in nego- tiation or to divine its ultimate purposes. These give the impression of being blurred and bedeviled by remote control— a control, it should be remembered, exercised jointly by two Governments (the Chinese and the North Koreari)and probably influenced by a third; a certain margin of ambiguity is therefore to be expected. But in the end Communist tactics always revert to aimless ob:truction, and at the present rate there is no reason why the negotiations should ever be either con- cluded or broken off.
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