JAPANESE PEACE TREATY

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26365, 8 March 1951, Page 7

JAPANESE PEACE TREATY

Talks In London Unlikely

LONDON, March 6. It is understood that Mr John Foster Dulles, President Truman’s special envoy, will not visit London this month to confer on plans for the Japanese peace treaty. It was previously stated that he would follow up his tour of the Far East with talks in London but it is now anticipated that he will make a report to the State Department. After studying this report, the department is expected to draw up a draft treaty, which will be circulated to all members of thq, Far East Commission. Presumably, when all members have studied it, a conference would follow. The British view, it is understood, remains unchanged from that expressed during the Prime Ministers’ conference. Then it was agreed that the Japanese peace treaty was a matter of urgency, that there was no desire to impose harsh terms on Japan, which should become a useful member of the United Nations.

Britain has no objections to the United States maintaining military bases in Japan, nor to the Japanese having a mercantile fleet. She also believes that the Japanese cannot remain unarmed indefinitely, and that there should be multilateral ratehr than bilateral agreements with S revisions made to meet the Austraan and New Zealand desire for guarantees against possible future Japanese aggression in the Pacific. The Washington correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph” reports that the United States is confident that by midyear she will have signed a peace treaty with Japan, the terms of which will be generally acceptable to her war-time partners in victory, as well as to the Japanese Government and people. The occupation will then end, General MacArthur will retire, and Japan will take her place as an equal among the nations of the world. “Mr Dulles returned from Japan having secured Japanese acceptance of treaty principles, to the formulation of which most of the nations that were at war with her have contributed,” says the correspondent. “The treaty takes as its starting point the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, which Japan accepted when she surrendered. “She will renounce all title and interest in her former possessions, except the four main Japanese islands and a number of minor islands, including the Habomai group, now occunied by Russia.

“She will not, however, renounce her title in favour of anybody in particular. This will permit a decision on the future of Formosa to be postponed and America to request a United Nations trusteeship for the Ryukus and the Bonin Islands. It will also enable America to refuse to recognise Russia's title to South Sakhalin and the Kuriles, unless she withdraws from the Habomai group.

“Australia and New Zealand wanted a peace treaty which would place severe restrictions on Janan’s capacity to rearm. To counter the danger of a revival of Japanese militarism, America promised that some arrangement would be entered into, making it clear that the armed attack on New Zealand or Australia from any quarter would be looked upon by the United States as a threat to her own security, “The exact form of auch a Pacific Pact remains to be worked out The fact that the Australian Minister of External Affairs (Mr P. C. Spender) will come to Washington as Ambassador shows the importance Australia attaches to this scheme.”

Dr. Clementis Reported Killed.—The Committee of Free Czechoslovakia announced to-day that it had secret unconfirmed reports from Czechoslovakia that the former Czech Foreign Minister (Dr. Clementis) had been killed while attempting to escape from custodyz-New York, Mtordi fl.