CHURCHILL AND EDEN IN ATHENS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 305, 26 December 1944, Page 5

CHURCHILL AND EDEN IN ATHENS

Surprise Peace Move

WILL CONFER WITH GREEK PARTY LEADERS

British Official Wireless—Rec. 1 'p.m.

RUGBY, December 25

The Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, and the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Eden, have arrived in Athens. They have convened a conference for to-morrow and the E.L.A.S. has been requested to send delegates. Archbishop Damaskinos will preside.

Field-Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, Allied Supreme Commander in the Mediterranean, accompanied Mr. Churchill and Mr. Eden to Athens. Immediately on their arrival they held consultation with Mr. Harold Macmillan, British Minister Resident in the Mediterranean, and Mr. R. W. A. Leper, British Minister in Athens. They then approached the Greek Prime Minister, M. Papandreou, and asked him to call a conference of representatives of all parties with a yiew to putting an end to the military strife. General Scobie, British Commander in Greece, has invited the central committee of the E.L.A.S. to send three or four delegates to the conference.

In an earlier appeal Archbishop Damaskinos called on all Greek parties to stop their internal struggle. He reminded them that he himself had been one of the leaders of the opposition to the Germans, and he had often risked his life by the action he took. They had now thrown off the yoke of the German invader, but they were wasting themselves with internal strife. He urged them to lay down their arms immediately and seek more peaceful methods of settling their differences.

M. Sofoulis, the elderly Liberal leader, and M. Cafandaris, the Progressive leader, have telegraphed King George of Greece urging the establishment of a Regency as a means of ending the present situation.