SPANISH POLICY

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 September 1945, Page 6

SPANISH POLICY

TRADE DEAL WITH FRANCE September 16. France and Spain signed a new trade agreement at San Sebastian yesterday. France will send to Spain phosphates, scrap, iron, bauxite, electric power machinery, and implements for chemical and electrical construction. Spain will send to France foodstuffs, substantial consignments of cork, textiles, and minerals.. , . - 1 4.V. Reuter’s correspondent. says the volume of goods which, it is reported, will be exchanged in the first six months, is worth about £20,000,000 sterling, of which £7,000,000 will be represented by a Spanish credit to France.’ The Associated Press says the agreement is the first of several sought by the Franco regime for which negotiations are now proceeding with Belgian and Italian missions at San Sebastian.

COMMUNISTS ARRESTED LONDON, September 14. “Members of the Spanish Communist Party’s central committee were arrested some days ago,” says Reuter’s correspondent in Madrid.. “The police arc said to have arrested a total of 70 people, including Santiago Alvarez, who was political commissar in the Republican sth Army Corps during the civil war, and Sebastian Zaparain, who is described as a prominent leader of the new Communist organisation. “The police say that both men left Spain before the end of the civil war and returned home some time ago with false passports and bulky luggage. The police also raided twow printing shops in which clandestine literature was produced.” EX-PREMIER’S RELEASE. (Rec. 11.35 a.m.) PARIS, September 16. Caballero, Republican Premier during the civil war in Spain, arrived by air from the Russian-occu-pied zone of Germany, where he has lived since his release from a concentration camp at Nuremburg last April. He said he fully approved the formation of Giral’s Spanish Republican Exile Government in Mexico. He added that the Germans beat him within an inch of his life before they evacuated Nuremburg. It was a miracle he did not die.