RECENT SOVIET MEASURES

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25548, 16 July 1948, Page 7

RECENT SOVIET MEASURES

The reply said that the interests of Berlin’s population did not admit of the introduction, even in Berlin’s ■Western sectors, of a currency which Jis not circulating in the Soviet zone. Moreover, a mass of invalidated currency notes threatened to pour from tne Western zones into the Soviet zone. The Soviet Command, therefore, had had to adopt urgent measures to safeguard the German population’s interests well as the economy of the Soviet zone and that of Greater Berlin. The dangers to the economy of the Soviet zone had not been averted yet. since the Western Powers continued to maintain their own special currency in Berlin. pe Russian Note rejected as “altogether unfounded” the United States declaration that the Russian transport restrictions on Berlin violated the wim agreements. The Note said that the Powers’ right J? their Berlin sectors depended on JW fulfilling the quadripartite pacts Germany as a whole when the Western Powers began cr eate in Frankfurt a Western Ger“an capital they undermined the legal

basis on which rested their right to participate in the administration of Berlin. During the war, when the United States withdrew its troops to the American zone confines as established in the four-Power agreemeht, it merely fulfilled its obligations. This fulfilment alone gave the United States the right to take troops to Berlin.”

The exchange of letters between President Truman and Mr Stalin in June, 1945, confirmed that the agreement then reached gave American, British and French troops the possibility of entering Berlin and Vienna, which had been captured only by the Soviet Army. The Berlin and Vienna agreements were only part of the agreements on Germany and Austria on the fulfilment of which the Soviet continued to insist.

The Note referred to the “temporary” Russian restrictions on Berlin’s communications and said that the Western Powers’ actions had caused difficulties in supplying the Western sectors. It added: “Berlin is in the centre of and part of the Soviet zone.”