TALKS BEGIN IN CAPE TOWN

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26031, 7 February 1950, Page 5

TALKS BEGIN IN CAPE TOWN

India, Pakistan, And South Africa

ASIATICS’ STATUS IN UNION

(Rec. 8.30 p.m.) LONDON, Feb. 6. Reuter’s Cape Town correspondent reports that Indian, Pakistani and South African delegates met to-day in Cape Town for preliminary talks on the vexed question of Asiatics in South Africa. Success in these talks will probably mean that India, Pakistan, and South Africa will attend a round-table conference, as suggested by the United Nations two years ago. An agenda on the civic, political and economic rights of Indian and Pakistani nationals in South Africa will be drawn up for such a conference. In Cape Town last night, the South African-Indian Congress organised a meeting to welcome the Indian and Pakistani delegations *to to-day’s Cape Town talks. India and South Africa were both members of the United Nations and of the Commonwealth, said an Indian spokesman. He hoped that, as a result of the talks, they would emerge closer friends than in the past. He said that opinions might differ on certain questions, but India was actuated by friendliest feelings in its approach to the talks. Pakistan Lifts Trade Ban

Pakistan’s decision to withdraw its trade ban against South Africa, and India’s intention not to lift its ban so long as disabilities on Indians in South Africa remained, were announced to-day. The trade ban against South Africa was imposed four years ago by India before the creation of Pakistan as a separate State, as a protest against “discrimination and disabilities” suffered by Indians in South Africa. From Karachi, it is reliably reported that, now Pakistan has ended its ban on trade with South Africa, it will begin buying South African coal. Pakistan will probably sell jute to South Africa.

Commenting .on Pakistan’s decision on South African trade, an Indian spokesman expressed regret that “in the treatment of a problem which affects equally the interests, rights and honour of Pakistanis and Indians, the Government of Pakistan should decide to abandon the unity of understanding and approach vzhich the matter requires.”