THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25878, 10 August 1949, Page 7

THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE

Ministers Discussing Assembly’s Agenda decision on new MEMBERS (R ec- 10 P.m.) LONDON, August 9. „ The .JO Foreign Ministers of the Council of Europe, now in Strasbourg, have 24 hours in which to agree on what freedom they will allow the members of Europe’s first international Parliament to choose their own subjects for debate. The European Consultative Assembly will meet at Strasbourg University to-morrow afternoon. The Foreign Ministers have yet to agree wnether the Assembly’s agenda shall be rigid or elastic. The Foreign Ministers’ deputies have recommended that the agenda should be in very broad terms. Some Ministers, on the other hand, believe that to promote efficiency, the agenda should be precisely defined during this first session of the European Parliament. ‘The French police have instituted strict security measures for the protection of the Foreign Ministers atthe Council of Europe.” says the Strasbourg correspondent of the Evening News.” “Armed detectives have been assigned to keep a day-and-night watch over individual Ministers. Police will patrol hotel corridors and outside guards will be doubled-. The strongest protection will k® J?* ven . to Winston Churchill. The City is sweltering under a heat wave.”

Council's First Meeting The Foreign Ministers yesterday met in the historic Strasbourg City Hall for the first formal session of the Council of Europe. The meeting lasted for nearly three hours. A communique issued after the meeting said that representatives of Greece and Turkey could attend to-day’s session of the Council if they deposited instruments of adhesion in time. For constitutional reasons, however, it will not be possible for Iceland to do so. Presumably Iceland will join the Council next year. The vote to admit the three nations was unanimous.

In the Assembly Turkey will have eight representatives, Greece six, and Iceland three. The Foreign Ministers of Denmark, Norway and Sweden decided at a private meeting yesterday that they would jointly oppose any attempt to admit Western Germany to the Council.

The Paris Communist newspaper “L’Humanite” said of the Council’s first meeting that it was “trying to make, a French town the capital of a German Europe under American management. The Council of Europe has sounded a rallying call for all the card-shulflers and tricksters of Europe.”

The Rieht-Wing french newspaper “L’Aurore” asked: “Will the organisation of Europe prevent war? Of course not; the only thing that will prevent war is the atomic bomb—until some new diabolical weapon is invented.”

The British delegation to the Council of Europe will oppose any move by Eire to raise the question of Irish partition, it was stated in Belfast yesterday. It is understood that the British Government’s attitude is that the position of Northern- Ireland is a domestic matter and has no relevance to the conference.