ADMINISTERING GERMANY

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24820, 9 March 1946, Page 2

ADMINISTERING GERMANY

CONFERENCE SOUGHT BY FRENCH (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) lEec - 8 P-m l LONDON, March 8. A French Note proposing a FourPower conference to take wide decisions on Germany as a whole has been received in London and will soon be Drought before the Cabinet. “The French Government was nut represented at Potsdam and has never accepted the Potsdam recommendation that central German administrations should be established, with German secretaries at their head,’’ says the diplomatic correspondent of “The Times.” “It has maintained that the f uture of the Ruhr and the Rhineland should be decided before any centralist tendencies should be allowed. As all decisions within the Allied Control Council must be unanimous, a large part of the council’s work has been brought to a standstill. “The French now propose that leading representatives of the four Powers should meet to try to find agreement, examining the western frontiers andthe proposals for central administration together. It appears that they would consider the creation of German technical agencies of a consultative character, working directly under the' Control Council.

Beyond that, the main purpose ot the conference would be to decide whether, or in what way, the Ruhr should be internationalised. The Russians draw back at any suggestion that the Ruhr, even under special control should produce steel and other products in greater amounts than are required for western Germany. They maintain that exports of such products would tend to tie the economies of European countries to that of Germany. “The British Government inclines to economic control of the Ruhr without political separation from the rest of Germany.

“The German Communists are already seeking to gain more support within Germany by strongly nationalist appeals against any detachment of the Ruhr.

“Agreement on all the problems raised by the French would be welcome,” observes the correspondent, “but even if unity on the technicalities of administration is achieved, many decisive matters within Germany will still remain unregulated. Foremost among these is the strong Communist drive under Russian encouragement for fusion with the numerically strong Social Democratic Party, and the creation of a United Workers’ Party. Fusion apoears to be imminent in Berlin and the eastern zone, and the Communists are agitating for it in the western zones, where it is being more successfully opposed because Communist means of pressure are lacking.

“Any earlier hones of Four-Power agreement on parallel political developments within the zones seem to be at an end. and new divisions and new rivalries seem to be threatened within Gormanv.”