On the east-central front, units of IX Corps pushed within 10 miles of Kumsong while I ROK Corps advanced along the east coast to Chodo-ri. Thus the UN forces occupied the most favorable line they had held since the great CCF offensive early in January. From the mouth of the Imjin this line ran northeast to the middle of the Iron Triangle, eastward across the mountains to the southern rim of the Punchbowl, then northeast to the coast of Chodo-ri (Map 14). _Communists Ask for Truce Talks_ The first anniversary of the Korean conflict was overshadowed two days earlier by the news that the Communists had taken the initiative in proposing truce talks. The suggestion was made in a New York radio address of 23 June by a Soviet delegate to the United Nations--Jacob Malik, Foreign Minister of the USSR. On the 25th the idea was unofficially endorsed in a radio broadcast by the Chinese Communist government. UN officials immediately indicated their willingness to discuss preliminary terms. The outcome was an agreement that representatives of both sides would meet on 7 July at Kaesong, then located between the opposing lines in west Korea. Why had the Communists been first to ask for a truce conference? Both Generals Van Fleet and Almond believed that the answer might have been traced to military necessity rather than any genuine desire for peace. “I felt at that time that the Chinese Communists and the North Korean armies were on the most wobbly legs that they had been on to that date,” said General Almond when interviewed shortly after his retirement in 1953. “They were punch drunk and ineffective, and I, personally, thought at that time that it was the time to finish off the effort.”[241] [241] _U.S. News and World Report_, 13 Feb 53, 40–41. Raymond Cartier, representing a Paris newspaper, probably spoke for most of the correspondents at the front when he suspected that the proposal for truce talks “was possibly just a crafty trick devised by the Communists to gain time and build up again the badly mauled Chinese armies.”[242] [242] _UN World_, Vol. 5, No. 10, Oct 51, 10. It might have been recalled at this time that the Communists had used truce negotiations for military purposes during the Chinese Civil War. In 1945 and 1946, when prospects for a Nationalist victory were bright, the enemy took advantage of American peace efforts by agreeing on several occasions to meet for truce conferences. And while prolonging the talks by all manner of subterfuges, the Communists profited from the breathing spells by regrouping their forces and planning new offensives. Their final triumph, in fact, owed in no small measure to interludes when the conference table served a military purpose.[243] [243] U.S. State Department Publications 3573, Far East Series 30, pp. 352–363.