RUSSIAN AIMS IN BALKANS

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25380, 31 December 1947, Page 5

RUSSIAN AIMS IN BALKANS

London Newspaper

Comment

“NEW PHASE HAS BEGUN” (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

(Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, Dee. 30. Commenting on the establishment of the rebel Government in Greece, diplomatic correspondent of the Manchester Guardian” says: “The results may well prove as serious as any single event since the end of the war. In Greece is to be seen a Soviet parallel with Hitler’s policy of seeking world domination.

“Almost everything that has happened in the field of international relations since the end of the war has shown that Russia is prepared to go to great lengths to achieve her immediate goal of creating a solid block of Communist dependent States along her European borders. As a result of shameful political trials, those who opposed or gave less than complete support for the totalitarian regimes of these eastern countries have now been liquidated and the peoples cowed into acquiescence.

A whole network of treaties has been woven, binding each country to each other and all to Moscow. The Cominform has been created to maintain and develop what has already bee , n achieved. The absence of Turkey and Greece from this block alone makes the realisation of this immediate> Soviet goal less than complete. It is against this background that the establishment by General Markos of an ‘independent Government’ in Greece must be seen. Russia will be prepared to sacrifice much if she can squeeze out Western influence from Greece and draw her into the group of pliant Communist satellites. “That an ‘independent Government* has now been proclaimed can mean only that such assistance as has already been given to the Greek guerrillas is henceforth to be substantially increased. For over a year foreign help has enabled the guerrillas to hold out against the Greek Government forces, but little more. That phase has presumably ended, and one with a more positive object—control of all Greece—has begun.

. 9 h oi c ®s for West The initiative is at the moment with Russia. The next few months will show whether the Western Powers are in a mood to appease Moscow in Greece or whether they are prepared to make determined resistance against her, because it looks as though nothing less than direct and determined action will prove effective. The Greek question seems to have all the elements of a test case in the struggle between the East and West.”

The Daily Mail,” in a leading article, lists Greece as one of four of the world’s “flash points” to-day, the others being Palestine, Persia, and India.

“These trouble spots,” it adds, “are all on the Russian frontier. Is this chance, or is there some design running through it? “The Markos Government is a cover behind which Russia hopes to overthrow the real Greek Government and spread Communism and widen her sphere of interest. “There is evidence that Russia has been fishing in the muddy waters of the Middle East and that Russian heat is being applied to Persia.” It notes that the Kashmir rebels are said to possess German rifles of 1945 make, which could hardly have come from Germany, and it suggests that the Soviet may have done her bit towards making trouble in Kashmir, which is “near enough to give Russia an excuse to ‘restore order’ in the event of trouble.”