CONTROL OF THE DANUBE

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25566, 6 August 1948, Page 7

CONTROL OF THE DANUBE

SOVIET PROPOSALS SUBMITTED FUTURE OF WESTERN INVESTMENTS LONDON, August 4. Britain and France are expected to fight vigorously at the Danube Conference for repayment of the millions which they have invested in the river commissions which the Russians propose to abolish. Britain invested between £60,000,000 and £70,000,000 in the European and international commissions which the 1921 Danube Convention established, and France invested considerably more. The Soviet draft for a new convention includes a clause cancelling these debts. Mr Vyshinsky, the Russian delegate, told the conference to-day: “Equal opportunity for all does not apply in the case of the Suez and Panama Canals. There is no reason why it should apply to the Danube.” Mr Vyshinsky presented the conference with the Soviet plan to give Eastern Europe’s Communist-dominated States exclusive control of the Danube, but at the same time creating for each participating country immediate control of the waters on its own border. Mr Vyshinsky said that the plan would do away with the privileged position which the 1921 convention gave the non-Danubian States. The British delegate (Sir Charles Peake) was in the chair at to-day’s session. Jugoslavia and Czechoslovakia supported the Russian plan. The Belgrade correspondent of the Associated Press says that the United States Ambassador to Jugoslavia (Mr Cavendish Cannon) will demand when the conference meets to-day that Russia unqualifiedly release the Danube for free navigation by all. ALLEGED DETENTION OF CHILDREN RUSSIANS CRITICISE BRITISH BERLIN, August 4. The Neues Deutschland, the official Russian news bureau, alleges that 70 Russian children aged from four to eight are detained in concentration camps in the British zone It says that the Nazis deported the children in 1944 from the Riga State Children’s Home. They are now at Hahnenklee, in the Hartz mountains. The Soviet military authorities say that the British refuse to repatriate the children on the ground that there is some doubt about the children s nationality. The Russians say that they “will not tolerate such treatment of Soviet children and will take every measure to liberate them.” A British official replying to the Russian allegation said that the British always sent home children immediately their identities were established, a task which was often long and tedious. The children referred to by the Russians would be returned to Latvia as soon as evidence of their origin had been carefully sifted.