BRITISH-FRENCH RELATIONS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 66, Issue 59, 19 December 1945, Page 3

BRITISH-FRENCH RELATIONS

NEW TREATY OF ALLIANCE PROBABLE

Big Improvement in Recent Months (N.Z. Press Association-Copyright.) LONDON, December 18. Though the terms of the Anglo - French agreement on the future of their troops in the Levant, and on Middle East policy generally are not yet published, there has been a ready welcome of the evident* fact that French and British relations are mending. It is remarked that the relations between the two countries has improved so much during the last few months that the conclusion early in 1946 of a new treaty of alliance between them is regarded in some London circles as not only possible but highly probable. It is reported from Paris that the Levant agreement provides for a withdrawal of British troops from Syria to Palestine, and of French troops to the Lebanon, the latter to remain there until security arrangements for the area are decided upon by ie United Nations. Since it is hoped that the United Nations will come into active existence before long, the period of French military sojourn in the Lebanon should perhaps be no longer than the fame it would, take to carry out full! evacuation. But so long as the United Nations is an uncertain fixture, there is no certainty in the Levantine mind.

The agreement, it is remarked, seems to point to an increase of French troops within the small Republic with no concurrent increase in British, and there is no immediate prospect of a methodical withdrawal from the whole of the Levant zone as envisaged in the Anglo-French communique. The numbers of French troops are, in fact, small, and only a matter of a few contingents from Syria will go to swell the French ranks. in the Lebanon, themselves less than 10,000. Their presence, it is thought, should too t prejudice any future arrangements with the Levant States, provided the British and French are harmonising policies that have as their object the peaceful development of the whole of the Middle East.

The British Government, it is understood, was very frank in acquainting the French Government with the steps whieh led up to the Moscow meeting and the reasons why it was considered necessary to revert to Big Three meetings in order to bring a greater measure of reality into the deliberations of more w r idely-based gatherings —-in particular, those of the United Nations Organisation. It was also made clear to the French Government that, if the question of Allied control in Germany was discussed during the Moscovf talks, Britain would not be a party to any decisions taken there or elsewhere to which France was not a willing party. ' General de Gaulle on his part indicated that he regarded the Moscow meeting as an attempt to solve what is primarily a Soviet-Amencan quarrel. It has not gone without notice both in London and Paris that a tendency toward the “polarisation” of world affairs, with Moscow and Washington exerting opposite attractions, has helped to renew the old ties between France and Britain. Being European Powers, they are more deeply and more immediately concerned with the future of Europe than are the United States and the United States; of Soviet Russia.

While the Levant agreement is evidence of a friendlier spirit between France and Britain, it is reported that almost equally notable is the anxiety Of the British. Government to avoid giving offence, to the French through the latter’s exclusion from the Moscow talks, and an understanding of Britain’s position in the matter is revealed by General de Gaulle in the public comments about the Big Three meeting.