GERMAN ASSETS IN HUNGARY

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25250, 31 July 1947, Page 7

GERMAN ASSETS IN HUNGARY

RUSSIAN SEIZURE AS REPARATIONS BRITAIN LODGES PROTEST (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, July 29. “Britain has presented a Note to Russia protesting againet Russia’s premature collection of German assets trdm Hungary as a form of reparation payment,” says the diplomatic correspondent of Reuters. “Britain considers that these assets should not be collected before the Hungarian peace treaty comes into force. “The Note adds that Russia is collecting gross German assets in Hungary, although under the inter-AUied agreement they are entitled only to the net total of assets after German debts to Hungary have been deducted from the Hungarian debt to Germany. “Britain is asking that the actual collection of assets should be the subject of an inter-Allied check. “The United States is understood to be presenting a similar Note.” “The British Government has asked the Soviet Gpvernment not to take over any more German or Italian assets in Hungary—factories and other enterprises—until other Powers which signed the Hungarian and Italian peace treaties have had a full opportunity to satisfy themselves that the enterprises are genuinely and wholly German or Italian,” says the diplomatic correspondent of “The Times. - ’ “The British Ambassador in Moscow (Sir Maurice Peterson) made the request in a Note presented to the Soviet Government yesterday. “The Note will almost certainly open a controversy similar to that continuing over Soviet claims to German assets in Austria. The Soviet right to genuine German or Italian assets (a right established at Potsdam and in the peace treaties) is noi contested, but the Western Powers considered that the Soviet claims in Austria were excessive, bringing in many enterprises which were more Austrian than German.

“It was with similar anxieties in mind that the British Government sent the Note concerning German and Italian assets in Hungary; they do not wish the Hungarian economy, • any more than the Austrian, to be unfairly deprived of its own resources. “In the past, Mr Molotov has strongly argued that the Potsdam decisions give the Soviet Union full right, without any further examination by the Western Powers, to take over German assets in former enemy countries of eastern Europe, and any disputes, he hjis said, should be settled between Mofcow and the former enemy country concerned.”