FRANCE'S EXPLANATION

Evening Star, Issue 25495, 28 May 1945, Page 5

FRANCE'S EXPLANATION

NO INTERFERENCE WITH INDEPENDENCE ALLEGATION OF STAGED INCIDENTS / LONDON, May 27. The French Minister of Information has issued the following statement:— "The French Government follows with the greatest attention the incidents staged in the past two weeks in various towns in Syria and Lebanon, for which the perpetrators took as pretexts .some movements of extremely small French forces, which were merely reliefs and replacements. The' Government points out that these movements were accompanied by vaster military movements carried out in the same regions for the same reasons by the British authorities, but which were not agreed upon with the French authorities charged with the maintenance of order.

" The French Government regrets the Syrian and Lebanese Governments thought fit to grasp the occasion for refusing to .negotiate with the French plenipotentiary, General Beenet. whose mission was to submit to them proposals for a general agreement regarding questions pending between Syria and France and between Lebanon and France. The French Government is all the less prepared to believe that the Syrian and Lebanese Governments «ould have felt any real apprehensions regarding France's intentions towards their independence, as it was France herself who proclaimed their independence, who proposed the conditions under which it should be guaranteed and gave obvious proof of her intentions by obtaining Syrian and Lebanese representation at San Francisco. There is no basis for the belief that this situation—for which the motives appear rather artificial —could possibly be interpreted wrongly by international opinion, despite the spreading of tendentious rumours."