[only] to those who are demonstrably on our side and willing to fight
for it’.^37 Dean Acheson and George McGhee, however, used the prospect
of food aid as a lever to demand a settlement of the ‘Kashmir issue’ and a
closer integration of Indian foreign policy with the USA’s, including
on the question of Korea. Nehru refused to be intimidated; therefore, it
was not until June 1951 that US food aid was finally agreed upon. From
British sources, Nehru would have been aware of the acute need for an
intermediary on the Korean question, and therefore able to withstand US
pressures; he became the main diplomatic channel between the ‘West’ and
China as the conflict continued. It was not, however, until early summer
in 1952 that substantial progress towards an armistice, pending further
negotiations, had been made according to Nehru’s early suggestions.
The sticking point thereafter remained the repatriation of North
Korean and Chinese prisoners of war: Truman suggested it was immoral
to repatriate to a communist country anti-communist soldiers who did not
want to be repatriated. The resolution passed in the UN General Assembly
on December 3, 1952, had been substantially drafted by India: force
would not be used either to return POWs or to prevent their return. This
phrasing of the repatriation question, in its evenhandedness, reflected the
Indian position on the necessity for compromise: it was important not to
highlight that too many soldiers did not want to return. The clinching
success for the resolution was the USSR’s opposition to it, believing it to
be too pro-Western bloc; therefore the USA had to accept it.
By this time Nehru and Krishna Menon, the central Indian diplomatic
figures, were seen by US policy-makers as enemies. Britain wanted India
to be present at the eventual peace settlement talks, but the US-supported
South Korean dictator, Syngman Rhee, opposed this. He claimed – as the
USA wanted him to – that India was pro-communist, pro-Russian and
anti-American; the USA, armed with this statement, asked India to stay
out of the UN delegation to the Korean conference, and pressured other
countries not to back India’s candidature. ‘Some countries who had openly
stated that they would vote for us had to back out,’ Nehru observed. ‘Not
only that, but American Ambassadors brought this pressure on countries
in their respective capitals. It really has been an extraordinary experience
to see how a great Power behaves.’^38
Nevertheless, Nehru’s India now had an independent international
standing of its own, and Nehru was highly regarded as a world statesman
of principle and talent. This regard was not always entirely positive; in202 CONSOLIDATING THE STATE, c. 1947–55