JUGOSLAV NOTE TO RUSSIA

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25870, 1 August 1949, Page 7

JUGOSLAV NOTE TO RUSSIA

CHARGES “BITTERLY” REJECTED DISPUTE ALSO ARISES WITH CZECHS (Rec. 8.15 p.m.) LONDON, July 30. The Belgrade correspondent of the Associated Press says that Jugoslavia, in a Note to the Russian Embassy today, accused Russia of deliberate insults and hostile acts. Replying to Soviet charges that Jugoslavia had imprisoned scores of Russian citizens without justification, the Note said: “It is with the greatest bitterness that the Jugoslav Government rejects these tendentious fabrications as entirely alien and unknown to the democratic socialist order in Jugoslavia during the revolutionary struggle of our people.” The Jugoslav Note added that the prisoners of Russian origin were immigrant White Guardists who because of their counter-revolutionary activities had fled from Russia to carry on anti-Soviet and anti-Jugoslav activities under the protection of reactionaries in the pro-Fascist regime in Jugoslavia before the war. The Prague correspondent of th'e Associated Press says that the Czechoslovak Government to-day sharply rejected a demand from Jugoslavia that it stop the Czech press from making “hostile attacks” against the Jugoslav people and the Tito Government. The Czech Government in turn accused Jugoslavia of waging “a continual, hostile policy” against Czechoslovakia and the. Soviet Union. Jugoslav diplomatic sources say that the Czech Government has ordered the Jugoslav Commercial Attache in Prague (Mr Ivo Barbalic) to leave the country within 24 hours. The Czechs are reported to have accused the Jugoslav commercial staff of smuggling machinery orders out of Czechoslovakia.