PEACE PACT IN THE BALKANS

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21088, 13 February 1934, Page 9

PEACE PACT IN THE BALKANS

LITTLE EFFECT WITHOUT BULGARIA COMMENT BV "THE TIMES" l»iirnsn orricm. \vittEi.ES3.) RUGBY, February 10. The text of the Balkan understanding which was signed at Athens yesterday by Greece. Rumania, Turkey, and Jugoslavia, and by which these powers mutually guuiantce their respective Balkan frontiers, is the subject of comment in ''The Times." That newspaper says • that it is natural enough that the four governments should desire an agreement designed to reduce the danger of international conflict to a minimum, but. as various Balkan critics have observed, the agreement is incomplete in one most important respect. A Balkan agreement which omits Bulgaria, not to mention Albania, is a contradiction in terms.

"All four governments wished to obtain the adhesion of Bulgaria to the pact." states "The Times," "but they have so far failed because while the bulk of Bulgarian opinion generally favours a good understanding with neighbouring Balkan nations, it is not prepared to renounce all nope of an agreed revision of the most onerous clauses of the Treaty of Nouilly under the Covenant of the League of Nations. Nor docs it wish to surrender the right to ask for more effective observance of the articles of the Treaty of Saint Germain, which should secure the rights of Bulgarian minorities, and some better guarantee than it is considered has yet been offered to the country's economic access to the iffigean Sea under Article 48 of the Neuilly Treaty. In these circumstances there cannot be much hope ot early signature of the pact by the Bulgarian Government. "From a more general European point of vbw the pact may best be described as good as far as it goes. It does not go very far."'