MUTUAL AID AND FINANCE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 115, 10 February 1944, Page 5

MUTUAL AID AND FINANCE

Franco-British Accord

LONDON, February 8. Two important agreements have been signed in Algiers today by the United Kingdom Government and the French Committee of National Liberation. One is a financial agreement on the lines of the 1939 one between France and Great Britain. It fixes the rate of exchange at 200 francs to the pound sterling in all territories now administered by the French Committee. There Is no change in the rate for Syria and the Lebanon. This agreement comes into force at ouce, and it is hoped it will form the foundation of a lasting peacetime monetary agreement between Britain and France. The. second agreement, is a mutual aid agreement to provide, free of cost, all military assistance for the joint prosecution of the war. It cancels all payments for mutual aid already charged under the arrangement of August, 1940, between the Prime Minister and General de Gaulle, but the French Committee of National Liberation confirms its responsibility for other advances made by the United Kingdom Government to the former French National Committee.

In announcing these agreements in the House of Commons, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Anderson, emphasized that the negotiations had been smooth throughout, and he said he hoped it was a happy augury for financial and economical relations with France. The French Commissioner for Finance, in a statement in Algiers, stressed the importance of the agreements. He pointed out that from now the whole French Empire had only one currency. He thought it highly symbolical that the franc and the pound should be linked as they were by the 1930 agreement. It was also symbolical that a FrancoBritish mutual aid agreement should be signed on the same day.