DRAFTING PEACE TERMS

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25085, 17 January 1947, Page 7

DRAFTING PEACE TERMS

VIEWS OF SMALL NATIONS PROPOSAL TO MINISTERS’ DEPUTIES (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec 7 p.m.) LONDON. January 15. After three and a half hours’ discussion, the Foreign Ministers’ deputies rose without having reached agreement on an Australian proposal that the small nations should be present at the deliberations and should participate in the discussions and have access to existing documents. A Foreign Office spokesman said bouth Africa and Canada also submitted papers on similar lines to Australia’s. When the deputies met, ’Mr Gusev (Russia) opposed the proposal on the f rounds that it was contrary to the oreign Ministers’ instructions and would turn the meeting of deputies intp a conference.

The United States, Britain, and France seemed willing to permit all the small countries to be present when one of them was stating its views. The depaties agreed with Mr Gusev’s proposal that they should hear the views of associated countries on the treaties in the order their applications were received.

The Czechoslovakian Foreign Office announced that Czechoslovakia will ask the conference of Foreign Ministers’ deputies to annul the Munich agreement and all its political and economic consequences in the German peace treaty. It also announced that Czechoslovakia was making a special demand for about 312 square miles of German border land. AZIS SATELLITE TREATIES FORMAL SIGNING IN PARIS NEXT MONTH (Rec. 9 p.m.) WASHINGTON, Jan. 15. Mr J. F. Byrnes will sign the Axis satellite peace treaties on January 20 as one of his last functions as United States Secretary of State. The completed treaties will be distributed on January 16 to all Allied countries. The documents will b.e sent to the Big Four nations for checking and then to Paris for the formal signing on February 10.