BRITISH VIEW OF PURGE

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27090, 13 July 1953, Page 9

BRITISH VIEW OF PURGE

“Not The End Oi Police State”

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright) (Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, July 12. The British Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr Anthony Nutting) said today that it was tA early yet to suppose that Mr Beria’s dismissal meant the end of a police state in Russia. “Ministers, even policemen, in Russia have for long been expendable. We should be rash to assume that just because Mr Beria has been sacked, Russia is about to become a parliamentary democracy with free elections and a free press and living cosily at peace with the world,” he said. This was the first public statement on Mr Beria’s dismissal by a member of the British Government. Mr Nutting said Mr Beria’s dismissal was meant to be a response bv the Soviet leathers to internal stresses and discontent which could no longer be ignored.

“If this is so, nobody can tell how far these processes may go. What is now going on behind the Iron Curtain may show that by standing firm with those who stand with us, we have actually weakened those who seek to weaken and destroy us.” He added that when one added the changes in the Soviet Union to those which were going on in the satellite countries, it was clear that the Communist regime was going through a difficult, perhaps even a critical period. Mr Nutting said the changes in Soviet internal policy, together with the gestures they had made in international affairs, were at least in part “dividends of our strength—the combined strength of the free countries of the Atlantic alliance.” He said it was imperative now that the West should keep strong and unified. “Negotiation from strength is our aim,” he said.