MEETING AT GENEVA

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 83, 7 April 1936, Page 11

MEETING AT GENEVA

ITEMS'. ON AGENDA

GAS WARFARE QUESTION

(British Official Wireless.) (Received April 7, 11 a.m.)

RUGBY, April 6.

The Foreign Secretary, Mr. AnthonyEden, will lead the British delegation at the meeting of the Committee of Thirteen of the League of Nations, which was summoned for Wednesday at Geneva to receive the report of its chairman, Senor de Madariaga, who, with the Secretary-General of the League, was requested to approach the Italian and Abyssinian Governments in order to enable the Committee to bring the. parties together with a view to a restoration of peace. Another matter upon which the Committee awaits information from the chairman has reference to the result of representations made by him to the Italian Government on the subject of gas warfare. It is presumed that both matters will appear on the agenda of the meeting.

In regard to the former, newspapers states that Senor de Madariaga will seek to obtain the opinion of the Com-

mittee as. to whether an invitation to visit Rome in response to an Italian proposal for an exchange of views of a general character with the head of the Italian Government should be accepted. REFERENCES IN COMMONS. Mr. Eden, who will leave London for Geneva tomorrow afternoon, referred to the meeting in the course of a reply to questions in the House of Commons today on the war in Abyssinia. He said that recent events had made it clearly desirable that the Committee should be called together without delay, and the Government had made known that this was its view to the chairman, Senor de Madai'iaga, who was actively engaged on the task he had undertaken, at the request of the Committee, of bringing the parties to the war together, and within the framework of the League and in the spirit of the Covenant securing a prompt cessation of hostilities and a final restoration of peace. Replying to a suggestion that a commission should be appointed to recommend a settlement, the Foreign Secretary recalled that last September the League's Committee of Five made a careful and thorough investigation of the. origin of and the issues involved in the dispute between Italy and Ethiopia and worked out in great detail a plan for a just and equitable settlement.

Questioned as to the Government's action regarding the use of gas and attacks by aircraft on Red Cross units and open towns in Abyssinia, Mr. Eden recalled that action had been already announced in relation to the first two matters, and said that as to the bombing of open towns, in view of the importance of guarding against violation of laws and customs of war relating to the protection of non-com-batants, the Government was making urgent representations that the complaints of the Ethiopian Government should receive immediate attention from the appropriate organ of the League.