PROPOSED SAFETY ZONE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 17, 20 January 1940, Page 11

PROPOSED SAFETY ZONE

PAN-AMERICAN PLAN

COMMENT ON BRITISH REPLY

BUENOS AIRES, January 18.

As a result of the recent British Note to the Pan-American Governments on the proposed safety zone, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Cantilo, in a statement, said that Britain and other belligerents were closing their eyes to reality if they were pretending that international law was so fixed that the American republics could not legally protect their shores from ' the incursions of a European war.

He admitted that alterations to international law must be made by mutual agreement among all interested' nations. The republics were not trying to legislate for ' others. The rules which they adopted were applicable only in the Americas, but similarly belligerents must be willing to negotiate with neutrals as equals instead of forcing unilateral decisions upon them. H

Dr. Cantilo expressed the opinion that it was perfectly feasible to conciliate, into a treaty agreement the apparently divergent viewpoints of the British and Pan-American Governments regarding the safety zone. He fully agreed with the British thesis that the safety zone must not be permitted to become a safety zone for the Germans, but he disagreed with the contention that nothing in international law authorised neutrals to apply sanctions against belligerents violating the zone.' He cited Article Nine of The Hague Convention and Articly 13 of the 1917 Convention providing that a neutral may prohibit access to her ports by a belligerent vessel not complying with orders or resolutions decreed by the neutral.

If the Allies agreed not to send warships into the safety zone it would be possible to get Germany to agree likewise. He disclosed that Argentina proposed the internment of all belligerent merchantmen which remained too long in American ports, and added that further clarification was needed of the British contention that the zone should not be used to permit German warships and auxiliaries to pass from ocean to ocean. He pointed out that the only possible channels were the Straits of Magellan and the Panama Canal, any impedimenting of which would probably c/ause Britain to protest.