India Boycotts Peace Treaty. Conference

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26510, 27 August 1951, Page 7

India Boycotts Peace Treaty. Conference

(N.Z. Press Association— Copyright) (Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, August 25. The Foreign Office said to-day that India had announced that she would not attend the Japanese Peace Treaty conference in San Francisco early next month. The Pakistan Government announced in Karachi its acceptance of the American invitation to attend the conference. Pakistan’s announcement brings the number of countries reported to have accepted invitations to the conference to 44. A Foreign Office spokesman said India’s rejection of the invitation to San Francisco was a great disappointment to Britain. The implications of India’s abstention are recognised in London to be serious, says Reuter’s diplomatic correspondent. They are not mitigated by reports that India will promptly sign a bilateral treaty with Japan. The decision means that neither of the great Powers of the Asiatic mainland—Communist China and India—will be a party to the draft treaty.

Observers in London consider the Indian decision to be a more severe blow to the San Francisco conference than the Soviet decision to attend and presumably object to the text. The decision means that a substantial body of non-Communist Asiatic opinion will also reject the text. A Washington message says the State Department was reported to-day to be drafting a stiff reply to ‘lndia s rejection of the invitation. American officials declined to comment formally to-day, but they said privately that India had decided against sending a delegation to the conference on the ground • that her refusal to sign the treaty would have been attributed in part to Russia’s arguments against the treaty. India believed that by staying away she could not. be accused of bowing to Soviet tactics.

The provision in the treaty for the stationing of foreign (American) troops in Japan violated Mr Nehru’s concept of ‘‘Asia for the Asians," says Robert Trumbull of the ‘‘New York Times" in a dispatch from New Delhi to-day. This is believed to be one of the basic reasons for India’s boycott of the San Francisco conference.

Another is thought to be Communist China’s exclusion from the Governments invited to sign, the correspondent adds. If India had sent a delegation to the conference, she probably would have found herself in the position of joining the Soviet camp in attempts to obstruct the adoption of the treaty. Some observers surmise that Mr Nehru may consider Russia as being legitimately an Asian Power, whereas the United States, in his view, is not.

Pakistan may now be in something of a dilemma—whether the benefits to be gained in the West’s goodwill by signing the treaty, will outweigh the increased illwill of India, with whom she is engaged in a bitter dispute over other matters.