Six Urge U.K. To Join Talks

Press, Volume C, Issue 29563, 12 July 1961, Page 15

Six Urge U.K. To Join Talks

(N .Z-P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) ROME, July 10. The Foreign Ministers of the six Common Market countries today urged Britain to join them in talks on August 1. The Ministers, meeting in Rome, decided to propose to the British Government that a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the West European I nion should be held on August 1 for “political consultations.”

The West European Union consists of the six Common Market countries and Britain The Ministers also reached agreement on the agenda of the forthcoming meeting of the six Heads of Government in Bonn on July 18.

According to a source close to the Italian delegation, the agenda of the Heads of Government will include the following four questions: Examination of the problems of the development of European political cooperation. General aspects of European

defence. Europe and the problems of Africa.

i Europe and the problems of Latin America. In Paris the Action Comi mittee for a United States 'of Europe today strongly ■ urged Britain to join the Common Market The committee, presided , over by Mr Jean Monnett, father of the European Economic Community, and representing the non-Communist political parties and trade \ union federations in the six Common Market countries, adopted a resolution which said: > "The committee considers that the participation of Great Britain and other European countries in the three European communities and the co-operation of our countries on the political plane would bring an important contribution to the unification of Europe and the organisation of the West. “The committee attaches the greatest importance to the prosperity of the Commonwealth and considers that Britain’s membership of the European Union will favour this prosperity, whatever the commercial attachments made necessary.”