De Gaulle’s E.E.C. Views Challenged By Italy

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31383, 31 May 1967, Page 15

De Gaulle’s E.E.C. Views Challenged By Italy

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

ROME, May 30.

President de Gaulle yesterday heard a direct Italian challenge to his British entry to the European Common Market and the Continent’s relations with the United States.

President Giuseppe Saragat, of Italy, who is in Rome for the Common Market’s tenth anniversary, told General de Gaulle, and the Prime Ministers of the Six market coun- s tries that negotiations on Britain’s second application to join the market should start soon. He also said that a united Europe must “certainly maintain its links of friendship, co-operation, and alliance with the United States.”

The Italian leader chose what was to be a purely commemorative occasion in the frescoed splendour of Michelangelo’s City Hall for what seemed a direct rebuttal of the views . put forward by President de Gaulle in bls press conference a fortnight ago.

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He chose an occasion when the general had no right of reply. The Heads of State and Government dp not get down to formal talks until today. The day went less than smoothly for the French in other ways. The Italian Foreign Minister, Dr. Amintore Fanfani, dropped out of the welcoming party for General de Gaulle at Rome’s Ciampino airport for talks on the Middle East crisis with the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Mr Adnan’Pachachi, who was stopping over briefly on his way to New York. Then, shortly before the Common Market ceremony, it was learned that the Belgian Prime Minister, Mr Paul vanden Boeynants, current chairman of the Market’s ministerial council, had declined an Italian invitation to speak. Speech Cancelled

Diplomatic sources said this was because French pressure had forced cancellation of plans for a speech by Professor Walter: Hallstein, who earned General de Gaulle’s hostility by seeking supranational powers for the Market’s executive commission, of which he is chairman. The Heads of State and

Government assembled in Rome City Hall where the Treaty of Rome setting up the Common Market was signed on March 25, 1957. President Saragat said the market’s first 10 years had “greatly exceeded the most optimistic forecasts.” But he added: “New prob-

lems await us, among them that of the geographical and historical dimensions of the community, with the entry of other countries, first of all Great Britain, whose name is nearly synonymous with political liberty. “We express the wish that the negotiations may start soon.”

Shortly before the ceremony, Pope Paul—who will receive General de Gaulle on Wednesday—told members of the executive commissions of the Common Market and Euratom that European unity was not only desirable but necessary and urgent both in the economic and political fields.