CONFERENCE ON EUROPE

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27445, 3 September 1954, Page 11

CONFERENCE ON EUROPE

France Welcomes British Plan

(N.Z. Frets Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8 pan.) PARIS, September 2. A French Foreign Office spokesman said last night that the Government warmly welcomed the reported British Government’s proposal for an Eight-Power Conference to discuss the solution of the problems arising from the collapse of the European Defence Community.

An official invitation to such a-conference has not yet been received in Paris, but it is expected to be presented today by the British Ambassador, Sir Gladwyn Jebb. The British Government’s proposal is regarded in Paris as being particularly well-timed, since it provided a suitable answer to the German Government’s suggestion yesterday that the future of Germany’s relations with the West should be discussed at a Seven-Power Conference—without France.

It was earlier announced from London that the British Cabinet today decided tp call an early Eight Power conference of the six nations who signed the now defunct European Army Treaty, the United States and Britain, to discuss an alternative method of rearming Western Germany. If agreement is reached on the meeting it will probably take place in London within the next three weeks.

The conference will be one of Foreign Ministers. The six nations which joined the E.D.C.—rejected by the French Assembly this week—are France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The new meeting will be a preliminary to the* special Ministerial session of the Atlantic Pact Council as proposed yesterday by Mr Dulles, the United States Secretary of State. Britain will propose to the meeting that West Germany should now be rearmed with safeguards against any resurgence of national militarism, and brought direct into the Atlantic Pact. The Cabinet took its decisions at a specially summoned two-hour meeting presided over by Sir Winston Churchill, who broke off his country holiday because of the crisis in Western defence and Gerjnan policies.