FRANCO'S REGIME IN SPAIN

Evening Star, Issue 25714, 11 February 1946, Page 5

FRANCO'S REGIME IN SPAIN

PLAIN SPEAKING AT (1.N.0. ASSEMBLY LONDON, February 9. The Franco regime in Spain was condemned at the bar of world opinion when delegate after delegate attacked it during the United Nations General Assembly’s debate on the Panama resolution. The Assembly strengthened and unanimously passed the resolution. Senor Jiminez opened the debate, urging the Assembly to adopt the resoultion unanimously. He described it as the logical sequence of the San Francisco resolution and the Big Three’s Potsdam declaration. Some delegates would like to see the language stronger, but Panama preferred a simple declaration whose letter and spirit should govern U.N.O.’s future relations with Spain. M. Ivan Ducaek (Czecho-Slovakia) said that if the world was to have peace without the nightmare of Fascism and Nazism it would have to eliminate, the remnants surviving in Spain. Franco became Spain’s master because Hitler and Mussolini needed him. It was an anchronism in world freedom that Nazi survivors, including Gestapo remnants, were still in refuge in Spain. Mr Noel Baker (Britain) said that the British people had not forgotten the 10 years of the history of the Franco regime,, and hoped for the earliest change in accordance with the principles for which the United Nations fought the war and the spirit animating the world to-day. M. Kuzma Kiselev (Byelo-Russia) said that the Franco regime had helped Germany with all its recoures. To the last day of the war it had placed them at Germany’s disposal, and had allowed ports to be used as bases for submarines. The Spanish Blue Division had faithfully served its German masters and had behaved as badly against the population as the Germans had done.

(M. Erik Colban (Norway) moved an amendment that members of the United Nations should act in accordance with the letter and spirit of the resolution in their conduct of future relations with Spain rather than merely taking the resolution into account, i '

The amendment was carried by 35 votes to three and the resolution by 45 votes to none.