JUGOSLAV AND ITALIAN REACTIONS

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25450, 23 March 1948, Page 5

JUGOSLAV AND ITALIAN REACTIONS

The Belgrade newspaper “Botha” today described the proposal for Trieste as a manoeuvre to break up the United Nations and a trick to influence opinion in the Italian elections.

“A parade of several hundred youths of the Italian youth movement, Lega NazionSle, was swelled by thousands of all ages as it made a three-mile march through Trieste,” says the Trieste correspondent of the Associated Press. “The police did not interfere with the demonstrators so long as they marched outside the Slovene sector of the city and Slavs remained within their sector. “The first reaction of the Slav man-in-the-street to the proposal for the reversion of Trieste to Italy was: ‘it is a political manoeuvre.’”

The proposal to return Trieste to Italy was an attempt to drag laly into the war atmosphere and sow discord beween Italy and Jugoslavia, said the Italian Communist leader. Mr Palmiro Togliatti. “Now we see on which side our friends are,” said the independent newspaper “11 Tempo.” “Il Messagero” said: “For the first time since 1943 the Western Powers have anticipated the Soviet in presenting a constructive proposal on one of the most delicate and dangerous international issues.”

In Milan a rally of more than 30,000 which welcomed the proposal for Trieste developed into a monster anticommunist demonstration. Demonstrators moved on the Czech Consulate

, and chanted in unison: “Masaryk! Masaryk! Masaryk!” The Milan correspondent of the Associated Press says that a cry of “Viva Trieste,” raised in Milams Duomo Square, produced fisticuffs between Communists and anti-Communists. The police stopped the fighting. The French Foreign Minister (Mr Bidault) commenting on the Italian reaction to his announcement, said: ‘T have just been reading the newspapers. I am very pleased.” French Right-Wing newspapers praised the initiative behind the proposal. The Conservative “Figaro” says: “It was impossible to prolong the present situation in Trieste. The decision will have profound repercussions throughout the peninsula, and will bring powerful support to the anti-Commun-ist parties in the electoral battle on April 18.” French Communist newspaper opinion is openly hostile. • In Berlin the Russian-controlled “Berliner Zeitung” claimed that Rie Western Powers’ proposal represented a pre-election “sacrificial reward” to win Italy over to the Truman Doctrine. It added that Trieste’s military Government had made the Free City experiment intentionally unworkable. Hungarian Sunday newspapers said that the proposal was “an aggressive step.” The Communist newspaper, ‘‘Szabad Nep,” said that the proposal was “a provocative attempt to change the structure of a hotbed of Italian Neo-Fascism.”