FURTHER TALKS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 143, 19 June 1941, Page 8

FURTHER TALKS

DARLAN AND THE NAZIS

Steps to prevent

U.S. MOVE

SITUATION IN SYRIA

(Rec. 2.20 p.m.) LONDON, June 18. The Vichy" Vice-Premier, Admiral Darlan, has opened further military conversations with Berlin with ; the object of devising joint French and German measures to prevent United States intervention against the French African possessions or the seizure of Dakar, according to a correspondent of "The Times" on the French frontier.

The. Germans are reproaching Admiral Darlan for allowing the British to forestall the Axis in Syria, and are insisting that American intervention must be prevented at all costs.

Meanwhile substantial quantities of material and a number of planes are being sent to Syria.

Admiral Darlan is paying lip service to the instructions of the Council of Ministers that the Syrian conflict should be localised, but actually, now that General Weygand has departed, Admiral Darlan is manoeuvring in exactly the opposite direction.

Well-informed quarters in Vichy, the correspondent states, fear that unless a decision in Syria is reached within a fortnight, Admiral Darlan will be able to ensure intervention by the French fleet. The fact that most of the German planes which were formerly in Sicily are now massed in Tripolitania along the Tunisian frontier indicates one trend of Franco-Ger-map discussions. Opponents in France of the Vichy Government are not only keenly disappointed, but anxious, over the slowness of the Allied advance in Syria. Moreover, British broadcasts to France seem to suggest that Britain continues to underestimate the deadly nature of Admiral Darlan's intrigues. Friendly Frenchmen insist that a British reverse in Syria would irreparably affect British prestige throughout France.—-U.P.A.