PARIS TREATIES SUPPORTED

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27564, 22 January 1955, Page 7

PARIS TREATIES SUPPORTED

Voting In Belgium’s Lower House BRUSSELS, January 20 x The Belgian Lower House today ratified the Paris agreements to rearm Western Germany and form a Western European Union. The voting was: 181 for and 9 against. Two members abstained. The three main political parties— Catholics, Socialists and Liberals—had all announced previously that they would support the bill. Five members, however, joined the four Communists in voting against it. The formal vote, by ballot in the second reading, followed almost immediately the standing and sitting vote in the first reading. Today’s approval leaves only the Upper House to vote on the treaties, but Belgium is not expected to pass them to the Upper House until France and West Germany have approved them.

Britain is the only member of the Western Union’s prospective sevennation organisation to complete Parliamentary action on the treaties, both the House of Lords and the House of Commons having approved them in November. The Italian Chamber of Deputies (Lower House) approved ratification on December 23. West Germany’s Bundestag (Lower House) will begin its debates next month. Holland and Luxembourg are due to hold their single-chamber debates soon.

France still has to put the bills before the Upper Chamber, the Council of the Republic.

Portrait of Menzies Wins Prise.—lvor Hele, the South Australian artist, today won the £5OO Archibald Prize for portraiture, with his portrait of the Australian Prime Minister, Mr R. G. Menzies. Hele was a war artist in World War II and in Korea. —Sydney, January 21.

The agency report said that with regard to the use of the resources of the United States 7th Fleet, two problems were said to have been put up to Congressional leaders at a meeting with the Secretary of State (Mr Dulles):

Marshal Chiang has asked for United States help in the Tachen Islands, which have been under Communist bombardment and artillery fire. The presumption in Washington was that the kind of help he wanted was that which would strengthen the defences of the island—more planes for air cover, more ammunition and supplies for his American-equipped forces. However, Marshal Chiang may have to withdraw from the Tachens, even if American supplies were increased, should Communist pressure become too great. He had no facilities for evacuation of the 20,000 or so troops defending these islands, and would need American help to get them out. Some of the many islands which Marshal Chiang held along the China Coast were regarded by American military men as having no real, value. The American authorities felt that the Nationalist defences over all could be strengthened if there was a regrouping of Marshal Chiang’s forces. Here again there was a question of the resources in naval protection and transport facilities to make such a regrouping possible, said the report. The American Associated Press correspondent said these problems were placed before the Congressional group today by Mr Dulles and Admiral A. W. Radford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Persons familiar with the conference said it was made completely clear there was no thought .of any wholesale evacuation of Marshal Chiang’s forces back to Formosa and the Pescadores Islands.

On the contrary, authorities said tonight that Marshal Chiang had every intention of holding on to strategically important islands, and apparently to the Tachens if he could do so.