PETROLEUM TALKS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 57, 8 March 1944, Page 5

PETROLEUM TALKS

Explanatory Discussions In

Washington

INTEREST IN' ARABIA

Rec. 1 p.m. WASHINGTON, Mar. 7

Britain and America will undertake preliminary explanatory discussions of petroleum questions at Washington. This was announced by the State Department. The Secretary of State, Mr. Cordell Hull, heads the American representatives. It is understood that the planned American pipeline across Arabia is one of the prime subjects. The Administrator of Lend-lease Supplies, Mr. Edward Stettinius, told a Press conference that the United States was always ready to discuss mutually interesting petroleum questions with any friendly country. This presumably opens the door of the conference to Russia and the Netherlands, who are interested in oil developments in Arabia and the South-west Pacific. "A Fascist approach to scuttle free -enterprise and a signpost on the new highway to international power policies which have not yet been revealed," is the description given to the American Government's proposal to establish a Middle East pipeline by the Council of American Petroleum Industrialists.

It is added that such an approach would place the Government into the oil and other private business, thus establishing a foreign policy almost as fatal as that made after the last war in the decision to scrap the battle fleet, because the Middle East oil project would mean the scrapping of America's internal strength.-