TROUBLE IN PERSIA

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 December 1945, Page 5

TROUBLE IN PERSIA

RUSSIAN TROOP MOVEMENTS. LONDON, December 6. “Russian troops yesterday moved behind the Persian troops, screening the northern provinces and placing themselves between the Persian troops and Teheran,” says Reutei s correspondent at Teheran. “LocM members of the Democratic Party at a Caspian Sea port are reported tn have seized the Persian Government buildings. Scanty news from the town indicates that the Democratic movement is spreading from toe northern provinces eastward. An attack on billets of troops at Sarab, <5 miles east of Tabriz, is reported. The attackers killed 21 men and two officers “The elections for the Azerbaijan National Assembly finished at Tabriz to-day. The Democrat Press announced the election of 700 Democrat candidates.”

Correspondents in Teheran, quoting radio reports from Tabriz, reported yesterday that new disturbances had broken out in the northern province of Azerbaijan. There were riots in Tabriz, where the chief of police was murdered, an,d near the Soviet border Democratic Party supporters had been killed. More than 30 persons had been killed. It was stated that earlier rumours of trouble were much exaggerated. The Governor of Teheran issued a manifesto yesterday admitting that Persian generally and Azerbaijan particularly needed essential reforms. He added that he was ready to meet all parties and groups in order to improve th? situation and to carry out necessary reforms but only within the limits of the constitution. The “Daily Mail’s” Teheran correspondent says: Russian prospectors have not waited for the oil concession that the Persian Government refused to give them last year. Russians have begun boring in at least three places in the Russian-occupied portion of Persia, near Tabriz and near Shahi and near the Caspian Sea. They have been boring for the last two and a-half months.