FRONTIER OF POLAND

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24983, 18 September 1946, Page 7

FRONTIER OF POLAND

Molotov Opposes Revision PROPOSAL BY U.S. REPUDIATED (N2. Press Association—Copyright) PARIS, September 16. Mr Molotov, in a statement to the Paris correspondent of the Polish Official News Agency, repudiated the declaration at Stuttgart by the United States Secretary of State (Mr James Byrnes) that Poland’s western frontier was subject to revision. Mr Molotov said that Qie Potsdam conference had determined Poland’s frontiers, which now only awaited formal confirmation at a future international conference for drafting the peace treaty with Germany. The importance which the Potsdam conference attached to its decision concerning frontiers was evident from the fact that the conference went on to decide upon the transfer of the German population from the territory assigned to Poland. The Potsdam decisions had not remained on paper, but had been actively realised. The Polish Government was now administering the whole territory east of the Swine-munde-Oder-Neisse line for the second successive year, and more than 2,000.000 Germans had been transferred to German territory from Poland, of whom more than half went to the British zone.

“It is obvious from these facts that the British. American, and Russian Governments attached great importance to the decision concerning frontiers. and in no case did they imply that the decision should be submitted to future revision,” said Mr Molotov. “Of course it is correct to say that the final settlement of Poland’s frontiers waited on the peace conference, but that is merely a formal aspect of the problem. It is unthinkable that the evacuation of Germans and the settlement of Poles should be regarded as a temporary expedient, to say nothing of the cruelty which a reversal of the process would inflict both on the Poles and Germans. "The Russian Government takes the view that the Potsdam Conference’s historic decisions concerning Poland’s western frontiers cannot be reversed, because the facts prove that it, is impossible to do sn now.” he said. Mr Molotov added that the Potsdam decisions on, frontiers were made over the signatures of Mr Truman, Mr Attlee, and Mr Stalin, which were highly respected bv the nations, because everyone believed in the strength and moral authoritv of these decisions. Certain expressions in Mr Byrnes’s sneerh might, produce doubts as to the stability of the attitude taken by some American circles to the matter, but it was obvious that problems of such a nature could not be the object of passing political calculations.