MOSCOW GIVES WARM WELCOME TO TITO

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27985, 4 June 1956, Page 11

MOSCOW GIVES WARM WELCOME TO TITO

(Rec. 10 p.m.)

MOSCOW’, June 2.

About half a million Russians loudly acclaimed Marshal Tito of Jugoslavia after his arrival in Moscow today on his first visit since Jugoslavia was expelled from the Communist camp eight years ago.

Among the Soviet leaders who greeted the Jugoslav President was Mr Molotov, whose resignation as Foreign Minister was announced last night. Russians lining the streets cheered and shouted “Tito” as the President wearing army uniform, drove in an open car with Mr Khrushchev, the Soviet Communist Party leader. Mr Khrushchev went to Belgrade in May last year to patch up the quarrel with Marshal Tito over Jugoslavia’s expulsion from the Cominform in 1948. After his arrival at Moscow’s Kiev railway station. Marshal Tito praised the present Soviet leadership and supported closer ties between Jugoslavia and Russia. “Our fates are inseparable,” he said. He added that, now the Soviet Government and Communist Party were following Lenin’s principles of collective leadership, he was sure “there will never again be misunderstandings among the nations of the socialist camp.”

Speaking in Russian to a cheering crowd at the station. Marshal Tito said he was sure that his talks with the Russian leaders would “establish mutual understanding between us.” They would not only strengthen Soviet-Jugo-slav friendship, but also strengthen friendship between all peoples and peaceful co-existence. On the Cominform rupture, he said: “The common struggle of our peoples from 1942 to the end of the war against the common foe testifies to the great truth that our fates are inseparable, and that there is much for which we can value and esteem each other.

“However, dear friends, something unheard of and tragic nevertheless took place, and neither the peoples of Jugoslavia nor the peoples of the Soviet Union were responsible for this “We were greatly pained, but we believed that the time would come when everything separating us would be overcome, and when our friendship would receive a new and still more firm foundation.

‘This time has come, thanks to the Leninist policy of the Government and the central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. . .

“The far-seeing foreign policy of the collective leadership of the Soviet Union is. in my profound conviction, a guarantee that nothing of the kind will ever happen again,’’ President Tito said.

Marshal Voroshilov, in his speech of welcome, did not refer directly to the Cominform break, although he noted an improvement in relations since the Belgrade declaration a year ago.

He said he was confident that Marshal Tito’s visit would bring about “a still greater expansion of political, economic and cultural contacts, and still more Soviet-Jugoslav co-operation in the solution of international problems in the interests of peace and the happiness of peoples.’’

The welcoming ceremony was televised and broadcast, and loudspeakers set high on the roofs of buildings carried a commentary and speeches to crowds in the streets. Marshal Tito’s arrival caused a two-hour traffic jam in the capital. Many Russians who caught a glimpse of the Jugoslav leader, commented: “How handsome Tito is.” Bouquets of flowers were thrown at his car as it passed. Moscow Radio announced that a through railway connexion between Moscow and Belgrade had been inaugurated today. The trains linking the two capitals cover the distance of about 1500 miles in 66 hours, the radio added.