Soviet Note On West Berlin

Press, Volume C, Issue 29536, 10 June 1961, Page 11

Soviet Note On West Berlin

(N .Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) MOSCOW, June 9. Russia has complained to Britain, France and the United States about the use of West Berlin for “the organisation of international provocations endangering peace,” the official Soviet news agency Tass reported. Statements handed to the embassies of the three countries in Moscow yesterday also drew their attention to “repeated acts of unlawful interference” by West German authorities in the affairs of West Berlin.

The Soviet Foreign Ministry also sent a statement to the West German Embassy saying the Soviet Government “could not be indifferent to new international provocations" prepared by the West German Government in West Berlin. It said West Berlin had never been part of the Federal Republic. “Responsibility for the consequences arising from the organisation in West Berlin of demonstrations hostile to the cause of peace will rest wholly with the West German Government and with those patronising them,” the statement said. In its statement to the French Embassy, the Soviet Government drew the French

Government’s attention to “the fact that several West German Parliamentary Committees are meeting in West Berlin, and that it is intended to hold a Bundersrat (Upper House) meeting there on June 16 “It is not concealed that these unlawful steps are designed as a new major provocation againsrt the Soviet Union, the (East) German Democratic Republic and other Socialist nations,” the statement said

Von Luckner 80.— Count Felix von Luckner. the famous World War I sea raider, today celebrates his 80th birthday, hale and hearty and ffopng to live to 110. Von Luckner claims he sank 40 Allied ships without the loss of a single life.— (Hamburg. June 9).