PREVENTING GERMAN REARMAMENT

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25161, 17 April 1947, Page 7

PREVENTING GERMAN REARMAMENT

Soviet Proposals For Treaty

FOREIGN MINISTERS FAIL TO AGREE

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright!

(Rec 7 p.m.) MOSCOW, April 15. The Soviet draft of the treaty for the demilitarisation of Germany and the prevention of future German aggression provided that: (1) To prevent German aggression and destroy German militarism and Nazism, all armed forces should be disarmed and disbanded in the shortest possible time. No military or semi-military organisation should be allowed to exist, and the manufacture and importation of all military equipment should be forbidden. (2) Britain, France, the United States, and Russia should control the Ruhr industrial region and the German syndicates, trusts, and banks controlling them should be transferred to the German State. (3) Every effort should be made to establish a democratic constitution approved by the German people. When these aims were achieved the Allied Powers should consider the discontinuation of the occupation. The Control Commission should then take over. The treaty would operate for 40 years. The Foreign Ministers, in conference. failed to agree on the treaty. General Marshall blamed Mr Molotov for sabotaging the treaty by proposing controversial basic changes which altered its character. General Marshall said: “This means no treaty.” The United States draft, which Britain and France approved, limited the treaty to the disarmament of Germany. Russia wanted to include reparations, the Ruhr, and Germany’s denazification and democratisation among a mass of other subjects which General Marshall declared would usurp for the Big Four the peace treaty powers of the Allies as a whole. He said that there was little or no chance of agreeing on those controversial points. If their introduction imperilled the measure of agreement already reached on German disarmament, it was a very serious stand for any government to take.

General Marshall said that Mr Molotov’s proposals would give tha future German government great economic and political power which might perpetually menace world peace. The Soviet refusal to agree to Germany’s economic unity without reparations from current production was the root and basis of most of the difficulties the Big Four had encountered at Moscow.

Mr Molotov, in reply, repeated the argument he had used previously and said that anything less than he suggested would give the Germans the impression that the Allies were weakening in their determination to keep Germany disarmed. He proposed that the Big Four appoint a special committee to consider the United States proposal as well as the Soviet amendments and any other amendments.

Mr Bevin said that the Big Four had been discussing the Soviet proposals for five weeks. “After that we are asked to refer all these to a special committee. If this is the best we can do we must be a sorry picture in the eyes of our people.” The Foreign Ministers after prolonged argument, passed to the next subject on the agenda, which was the German coal report. Mr Bevin then accused Mr Molotov of making knowingly two untrue statements at the conference: (1) that Britain had received coal as reparations, and (2) that the British zone’s coal production was so low that it had not distributed any coal to the other zones by June, 1946. United States officials, after the session, said Mr Molotov’s sweeping proposals for revision of the treaty draft were not acceptable as a basis for a four-Power treaty against German rearmament, as they included matters which the United States rejected, such as four-Power control of the Ruhr. General Marshall went to the Kremlin this afternoon for a conference with Mr Stalin.