WESTERN POLICY ON GERMANY

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25811, 24 May 1949, Page 5

WESTERN POLICY ON GERMANY

Ministers Prepare For Talks With Soviet

(N.Z.P.A .—Reuter—Co pyright)

LONDON, May 23. The three Western Foreign Ministers met at the French Foreign Office yesterday for final talks on policy co-ordination before the opening of the Council of Foreign Ministers to-day. The Ministers again studied a joint report by their deputies on the preliminary conferences of the last week. Reuter’s Paris correspondent says that the Western Foreign Ministers will be in a far stronger position than they were at the Moscow and London conferences in 1947. They have consolidated their position In Europe, and the battle for European recovery has turned favourably for them. They have strengthened their position politically through the North Atlantic Pact and the establishment of the Council of Europe. The Paris correspondent of the Associated Press says: “According to ail authoritative source, the Western Powers are agreed on a common German policy to present *o Russia. It is understood that the last obstacle to Western agreement was removed when the United States Secretary of State (Mr Dean Acheson) gave an assurance that the United States would oppose any proposal by Russia Jor the quick withdrawal of the occupation troops. “The basis of the Western Ministers' stand, according to this source, will include: “(1) Firm support for the West German State and no compromise on any plan that would jeopardise its existence. Any unification of Germany must come on the basis of the West German Constitution just ratified.

“(2) Opposition tq the withdrawal bi the occupation troops. Any such proposal would be referred by the West for ‘further study oh the basis of a gradual reduction over a period. “(3) An iron-clad .agreement with Russia over the future of Berlin will be sought, irrespective of whether agreement on Germany as a whole is reached. This question may be given priority in view of the present rioting and disorders sweeping Berlin.” Moderation and compromise are commended to the Foreign Ministers bv two V leading British newspapers, “The Times” and the “Manchester Guardian.” The “Manchester Guardian” says: “Involuntarily Germany still threatens us all, not only as the chief cause of disagreement between East and West, but as a mass of contradictory and exRlosive tendencies which neither side as been willing to control.” “The Times” says that as neither side is likely to accept the other’s constitutional proposals for Germany the Western Powers should have a second and more modest plan to fall back on. The “Daily Express” says that the aims in Paris should be that in the end the armies of eVery nation would quit Germany, and that the Germans would be given an opportunity to reconstruct, to reform, and to have their own central government. The Communist “Daily Worker” criticises those ‘foreign policy experts of the capitalist press” who, it says, are advising Mr Bevin and Mr Acheson not to compromise with the Soviet Union. “The Soviet Union is not. a defeated foe and will not tolerate a settlement dictated to it,” it adds. “Agreement must be Voluntary, not dictated.”