GERMAN TREATY TERMS

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25083, 15 January 1947, Page 7

GERMAN TREATY TERMS

MINISTERS’ MEETING IN MOSCOW

PREPARATORY WORK BY DEPUTIES (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

8 p m,) , LONDON, Jan. 14. • Fr el »mmary work for the meeting in Moscow of the four Foreign Minister will begin in London to-day, when the seven deputies of the Foreign Ministers will meet to prepare the ground tor the conference. The seven deputies are Sir William Strang and Lord Hood (Britain), Mr Robert Murphy and General Mark Clark (United States), Mr F. T- Gusev (Russia), and Mr Couve de Murville and Mr- Jacques Paris (France). The deputies are charged with drafting the procedure to be adopted in drawing up the peace treaty with l . rmany, the preparation of an instrument which will give Austria the im

dependence promised he.r in the Moscow agreement, and consideration of the recommendations and views of the 18 other Allied nations who participated in the’ Paris Conference. The chief problems concerning Austria are the fixing of reparations and the term of the present Allied occupation of the country. Her right to independence within her own frontiers has already been recognised, and her central Government ia already in being. The problems surrounding the German settlement are much more complex. One of the most important of them is to decide what German Government, if any, will be given the task of signing the peace treaty. Opinion is growing that this difficulty may be solved by ’’imposing” a treaty without creating Germany a signatory Power. This solution is reported to be generally supported in - Germany, where the various political parties are anxious to avoid the approbium attached to the signing of the treaty. It is also recognised that any German Government signing the treaty—which will inevitably be severe—will be gravely prejudiced from the outset. German newspapers give prominence to messages from London about the opening to-day of the preliminary conference on the German and Austrian peace treaties., but it is hardly to be believed that their readers give the subject more than a passing thought, says. the Berlin correspondent of “The Times.”

This winter, more than last, the Germans are preoccupied with the problems of existence in their simplest forms, namely, how to keep warm and how to get enough food. The shaping of the treaty for Germany arouses little interest outside the political parties, and even that interest tends to be tinged with a feeling of hopelessness since the German parties, though they can and do draw up statements embodying their hopes and wishes, are not sure how much of a h -aring they can expect. The Communist-controlled Socialist Unity Party hopes that representatives of the German anti-Fascist parties—by which they mean themselves and the Social Christian and Liberal Democrat parties—may be heard at the London meetings. The Socialist Unity Party is still the instrument of Russian politics in Germany, but it does no* necessarily follow that the Russians will support the German representations. There are always likely to be points, such as the future of the present eastern frontier, where the Russian and Socialist Unity Party views will differ. • All parties, the correspondent adds, hope that when the treaty is framed there will be some revision of the eastern frontier provisionally laid down at Potsdam and that part at least of the territory now under Polish administration will be returned to Germany. Dr. Kurt Schumacher, chairman of the Social Democratic Party in the western zones, has said his party does not accept as final decisions which anticipate those of the peace conference, and that this applies to the frontiers in both the east and the west