SUBMISSIONS BY ITALY

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24960, 22 August 1946, Page 5

SUBMISSIONS BY ITALY

PARIS CONFERENCE DISCUSSIONS

BEVIN PRESIDING AT FULL SESSION

(Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, August 21. The British Foreign Secretary (Mr Ernest Bevin) is presiding at to-day’s full session of the Paris Conference, which is to hear the views on the peace treaties of Albania, Egypt, Mexico, Cuba, Persia, and Austria. The South African Prime Minister, General Smuts, also made his first appearance at the conference. Poland, Jugoslavia, Belgium, Holland, Byelorussia, and Ethiopia urged the Italian Commission of the conference to reject the claim in the Italian memorandum on the treaty that Italy was not at war with all the 21 nations represented at the conference. The memorandum asserted that Italy had not received a declaration of war from certain countries. If those countries considered themselves at war with Italy it resulted from unilateral action. The memorandum urged the deletion of “surrendered unconditionally” and a replacement saying that “Italy was the first to break from the tripartite countries,” in a suggested reference to be made to Italy’s share in the war against Germany. After discussion lasting seven and a half hours the commission adopted a motion recording that the Italian memorandum requesting modification of the treaty had not been taken up in any form by any delegation as an amendment, and that therefore it was not endorsed as such.

The correspondent of the Associated Press says: “As the Italian Commission’s discussion wallowed aimlessly, Mr Vyshinsky (Russia) declared that he was losing hope of seeing the treaty discussed on its merits. He urged, the commission to start work and stop talking on how it was going to do it. The commission, after 80 minutes, began a discussion on the Italian memorandum on the preamble to the treaty.”

The Rumanian Commission adjourned after deciding that it was useless to begin preliminaries before hearing the former enemy States and before amendments were received. Czechoslovakia submitted two amendments to the draft Hungarian peace treaty, aimed at: (1) Securing a final settlement of the problem of the 500,000 Hungarians now in Slovakia by the transfer of 200,000 inhabitants of Magyar ethnic origin to Hungary; (2) Hungary’s cession to Czechoslovakia of territory covering about 44,000 acres on the south bank of the Danube opposite Bratislava.