Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit MONDAY, MARCH 29, 1948. FUTURE OF TRIESTE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 68, Issue 142, 29 March 1948, Page 2

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit MONDAY, MARCH 29, 1948. FUTURE OF TRIESTE

For a long time after the liberation of Trieste trouble was experienced in the area. Things calmed down under Allied control, ibut now the proposal to hand Trieste back to Italy has brought the whole matter to the surface again. It will be recalled that Trieste was to remain under Allied control until such time as a governor was appointed, but this has not yet been done. There has also come into Allied hands evidence to show that the Yugoslav zone had been transformed in character, and had been virtually incorporated in Yugoslavia 'by procedures which did not respect the desire expressed by the powers to give independent and democratic status to the territory. During the Council of Foreign Ministers’ discussion of the Italian peace treaty, it was the consistent position of American, British and French, representatives that Trieste, which has an overwhelmingly Italian population, must remain an Italian city. Given the impossibility of securing the. adoption of such a solution, the three Governments agreed that the city and a small hinterland should be established as a free territory under a statute which it was hoped would guarantee, with the co-operation of all parties concerned, the independence of the people of the area, including the Italian city of Trieste. The present proposal by the three Powers is, then, nothing new. They have all along been of.the opinion that Trieste should return to Italian control, and this can be done quite apart from the Italian Peace Treaty. It was suggested at one stage that Yugoslavia would agree providing she was granted Gorizia, but this was later denied. She does not need to press the point, because in the southern zone the Yugoslav authorities', have evicted persons of Italian race not subservient to the Yugoslav theories of Government, have created a completely totalitarian police force, have confiscated and redistributed land for political purposes, have set up people’s courts and suppressed opposition meetings and the opposition press. In brief, Yugoslavia has established in the southern zone a Communist totalitarian regime conforming to the usual pattern.