COUP IN PRAGUE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 68, Issue 146, 2 April 1948, Page 3

COUP IN PRAGUE

Debate Continued in U.N. Council

ACTION SOUGHT BY CHILE (N.Z.P. A.—Copyright). NEW YORK, March 31. The Chilean delegate to the United Nations (Mr Herman Santa Cruz) asked the Security Council to-day to appoint a committee to sift all available evidence on Chile’s charge that the Soviet manipulated the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia. He said "that this could be a preliminary step toward a full investigation .by the Council. As Chile is not a member of the Council, Mr Cruz’s proposal will have to he submitted formally by a member nation, Mr Cruz denied the Russian charge that his country had acted as an American lackey in bringing the case to /the Council. Chile had acted on its own responsibility. He added that he already had the names of six Czech exiles who were willing to testify regarding the events leading to the Communist assumption of power. Dr. T. F. Tsiang (China) urged the Council to invite the men most direct, ly involved —presumably the President (Dr. Benes) and the Prime Minister (Mr Klement Gottwald)—to come to New York and tell about the Communist coup. . ■ , Dr. Tsiang said that the Council and the world must face the Czechoslovak problem now rather than wait two to five years. He compared the Czech problem with the Communist problem in Manchuria. Both areks, he said, were cradles of conflict. General H. G. L. McNaughton (Canada) said that it was the • Council’s duty to arrange to hear witnesses '-tfho had had to flee Czechoslovakia to avoid persecution. . The debate was adjourned until April 6. '■ ESCAPE FROM PRAGUE DR. STRANSKY REACHES LONDON . ‘ LONDON, March 31. A prominent member of the Czech Social Democrat Party, Dr. Jail Stransky, who recently disappeared from Prague, has arrived in London by air with his English-born wife. They said that they awaited a chance to elude the guards surrounding their Prague home, drove to the frontier, and then went on foot separately toward the American zone of Germany. They met three days later. The Czechoslovak Government has alleged that members of the French Embassy in Prague assisted in tbe attempted escape of two former Ministers, Monsignor Jan Sramek and Monsignor Hala, at the Rakovnik airfield on March 21, and in a Note to the Embassy demanded the withdrawal of the employees concerned.

FOREIGN BROADCASTS UZECH PEOPLE WARNED (Rec. 10.30 a.m.) PRAGUE, April 1. The Central Action Committee warned people who “organise mass listening” to foreign radio broadcasts considered hostile to the Republic that they/might “be dismissed froin public life.”