GUERRILLAS IN GREECE

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25092, 25 January 1947, Page 7

GUERRILLAS IN GREECE

GOVERNMENT PLANS “FINAL ATTACK” TSALDARIS FORMS NEW COALITION (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) ATHENS, January 23: The Greek Prime Minister (Mf Tsaldaris) announced in the Chamber of Deputies that the Greek General Staff had completed plans for a final attack on the guerrillas. “We will pass in a few days and perhaps a few hours from defence to counter-offensive,” he said. He also announced that a new coalition Government, representing

seven of the eight Parliamentary parties, would face Parliament tomorrow. Mr Tsaldaris said that Greece’s appeal to the United .Nations for an investigation of the situation on her northern borders was not directed against anybody. She was merely seeking Balkan peace.

He had sought Allied support for a reconstruction plan requiring £311,500,000. American business firms had asked the Import-Export Bank for a loan of £87,500,000 for projects in Greece.

RETURN OF WAR PRISONERS

FRANCE REJECTS U.S.

REQUEST

SOVIET SAID TO HOLD 3,000,000

WASHINGTON, January 23. France, by implication, has rejected' a United States request that 620,000 German prisoners of war should be returned without delay. France, in a counter-proposal, suggested that a third party should be asked to prepare a long-range repatriation plan. France has explained that her manpower shortages preclude the early return of German prisoners. The United States is concerned because the prisoners were captured by the United States forces and transferred to France for custody. Stating that it is estimated that the Soviet Union still’ holds 3,000,000 German war prisoners, a high Military Government official in Berlin said, that the Americans would ask the Russians at the meeting of the Foreign Ministers’ Council in Moscow in March to speed their return. America now holds only 59,000 prisoners in who are expected to be released by July 1. Britain, according to American figures, still holds about 400,000, and is returning them at the rate of 15,000 monthly, “which is as many as traffic facilities will allow.”

ITALIAN-JUGOSLAV RELATIONS

DIPLOMATS TO BE EXCHANGED

(Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, January 23. “The representative of Jugoslavia has informed the Italian Government of the intention of his Government to appoint a diplomatic mission to the Italian Republic,” says the Exchange Telegraph Agency ‘correspondent in Rome. “The Italian Foreign Minister (Mr Nenni), expressing satisfaction with this friendly step, informed the Jugoslav representative that an Italian diplomat would be appointed to Belgrade when the new Italian Government was formed.” ARBITRATION IN AUSTRALIA GOVERNMENT reply TO UNIONS CHANGE IN SYSTEM NOT FAVOURED (Rec. 7.45 p.m.) SYDNEY, Jan. 24. Senior Federal Ministers are understood to have told a deputation from the Australasian Council of Trade Unions that they did not favour altering the present judicial system of arbitration. The deputation submitted a draft bill proposing many changes in the arbitration system. The Government does not favour transferring to conciliation committees the Arbitration Court’s exclusive power to determine wages and hours of work. When the delegation asked the Government to streamline the wage pegging regulations so that real wage increases could be granted quickly without reference to the Acting-Chief Judge of the Arbitration Court, the Prime Minister (Mr Chifley) announced that the Government would not alter these regulations. The Ministers at the conference contended that the regulations had been made sufficiently elastic to permit the Court to deal with union applications for increased margins, penalty rates, and rates for shift work and piecework.

The draft bill proposed that the Arbitration Court should be restricted to a single judge concerned only with matters of law, and that conciliation committees should be set up with power to decide wages and hours for particular industries.

ADMISSIONS TO AUSTRALIA

LANDING PERMITS STOPPED

(Rec. 8 p.m.) CANBERRA, Jan. 24. Australia has stopped issuing landing permits on purely humanitarian grounds, according to an announcement by the Minister of Immigration (Mr A. A. Calwell). He said that in 1946 34,500 people entered the Commonwealth, of whom only 2 per cent, were refugees. Because of the acute housing shortage and other factors, the Australian Government could not sanction the admission of refugees or displaced persons who had no relatives to look after them on arrival.

Mr Calwell said that a few thousand permits were granted for persons who had relatives already settled in Australia. Now the Government felt it had gone as far as could be reasonably expected. The issue of permits on that basis had closed, and in future approval of applications would depend more on the intending migrants’ ability to contribute to Australia’s economic welfare. „