FINAL DAYS AT BERLIN

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27277, 18 February 1954, Page 11

FINAL DAYS AT BERLIN

More Discussions On New China (K.Z. Press Association— Co p U rig M l (Rec. 10 p.m.) BERLIN, February 17. The Big Four Foreign Ministers will meet in a secret session again this morning to discuss the possitahty of talks with Communist China. The British and United States Ministers believe that the chances of reaching agreement on Mr Molotov’s call for a Big Five conference are small, but the French delegates—anxious to end the seven-year-old Indo-China war—are reported to be taking a more optimistic view. In the afternoon the Ministers will return to discussing Germany and European security. The final discussion on the Austrian Treaty will take place tomorrow before the Ministers issue their closing statements on the conference. Interest in the plenary debate on Germany and European security concentrates on how Mr Molotov will answer the question which Mr Bidault put to him three times last night.— Does the European Collective Security Pact, which Mr Molotov proposes, call categorically for the scrapping of the North Atlantic Alliaace? This question is largely academic but a negative answer would throw useful light on Soviet foreign policy. The European Western Powers already have firmly rejected Mr Molotov’s “Europe for the Europeans” plan because they prefer to work with the United States than with the Soviet Union.

The final session of the Ministers will be in the former Allied Control Authority building in the American sector, a united States spokesman said tonight. Mr Dulles planned a brief meeting with the West German Chancellor (Dr. Adenauer) on Thursday night at the' Wann airport, near Cologne. Mr Dulles will then be on his way back to Washington.

“No Loose Ends” Reuter s correspondent in Berlin t a ys that when the Big Four Foreign Ministers leave Berlin this week, no loose ends will remain. The break will be absolutely ciear, and no new conference on Germany will be planned. The Western Foreign Ministers are determined to leave no committees of experts behind, because that would give the impression in Europe that there was still a lingering hope of settling the German problem. The most the West will do is to instruct its High Commissioners to try to negotiate with their Soviet opposite numbers on measures to alleviate conditions for the Germans caused by the division of their country.