From the S&S archives:
West blocks Red China bid for big-power status at talks

GENEVA, April 26 — The West won a swift first-round victory at the Far Eastern peace conference today in an East-West agreement that eased Red China out of big-power status in the parley.

The agreement staved off a major rumpus on which the conference easily might have foundered.

The 19-nation parley, called to seek a Korean political settlement and end the Indo-China conflict, got slowly under way after successfully sidestepping this first threatened crisis.

At an opening session lasting barely 40 minutes it agreed that:

1—The chairmanship, which Red China had hoped to share on a basis of equality with the Big Four, would rotate among a three-man panel consisting of the foreign ministers of Thailand, Soviet Russia and Britain.

2—It would plunge at once tomorrow into discussion of Korea — top topic on its agenda and the original reason for calling the parley.

Then the three Western foreign ministers got together over cocktails at the lakeside villa where French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault is staying.

Informed sources said they discussed primarily the Indo-China conflict.

Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov originally had been invited to join them there. But the four-power meeting was canceled at the last moment and only the three Western ministers were there.

The quick Soviet cave-in on the Red China issue came as a surprise to the West, which had feared it would explode into a critical storm at the opening of the conference.

The Soviets have been under heavy pressure from the Chinese Reds to win recognition of equal status for them at the conference table. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had warned he would walk out rather than participate under a Red Chinese chairman.

British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, acting as spokesman for the three Western powers, conferred for nearly an hour with Molotov on the issue this morning,

Two further rebuffs were delivered to the Chinese Reds during the course of the day.

First, Thailand's foreign minister, Prince Wan Waithayakon, in his opening speech as chairman, referred pointedly to the four inviting powers as the U.S., Britain, France and Soviet Russia. The Chinese Reds had tried to get themselves considered as an inviting power.

Then Bidault's original invitation to the other foreign ministers for cocktails was pointedly made a Big Four affair. Red China's Chou En-Lai was not invited.

The conference will plunge into its first working session at the Palace of Nations at 3 pm tomorrow.

It is scheduled to begin a general debate on the Korean political problem — an issue on which the West sees little if any chance of agreement with the Soviet bloc

South Korean Foreign Minister Y. T. Pyun is scheduled as first speaker.