CONFERENCE IN MOSCOW

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25090, 23 January 1947, Page 7

CONFERENCE IN MOSCOW

FREEDOM FOR REPORTERS SOVIET ASSURANCE TO U.S. (Rec. 7 p.m.) WASHINGTON, Jan. 21. Russia has assured the United States that foreign press correspondents will be permitted to report "with complete freedom” the Foreign Ministers’ conference in Moscow in March. The United States Ambassador in Moscow (Lieutenant-General Bedell Smith) has advised the State Department that Mr Vyshinsky, the Russian Deputy-Foreign Minister, had told him that journalists would be free to reSort on “conference matters,” which is iterpreted as meaning that they would not be permitted freely to discuss other subjects such as internal conditions in Russia. Lieutenant-General Bedell Smith also said he believed limited broadcasting facilities would be provided. The Russian Government was not prepared to state the number of correspondents who would be permitted to enter Russia to cover the conference, because this depended on the strength of .the official delegations Mr J. F. Byrnes, the former United States Secretary of State, in agreeing with the'proposal that the conference should be held in Moscow, insisted that there should be no repetition of the restrictions on newspaper correspondents which applied when Mr Byrnes,'Mr Bevin, and, Mr Molotov met in Moscow in December, 1945.