Belgrade Turns East

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 August 1946, Page 6

Belgrade Turns East

|T is clear from recent happenings an

utterances that the Jugoslav Government desires no longer to make any secret of its anti-British policy. With the Republic proclaimed, the constitution written, and Mikhailovitch tried and executed, Marshal Broz-Tito now apparently feels himself secure. Dropping all pretence, he is orientating his foreign policy away from the West and towards Russia.

The most important cause of estrangement between Belgrade and the Western Democracies is, of course, Trieste. As long as the future of Trieste was uncertain, the Jugoslav Government felt bound to refrain from obviously hostile acts, although plenty of an irritating nature occurred. There was a definite purpose in view. It was clear, however, that Broz-Tito’s Government would become definitely antiWestern as soon as it had either achieved its aims in Trieste or failed to achieve them. The Big Four Powers, after lengthy wrangling, have now decided to internationalise that area and for Broz-Tito an important cause of restraint has been removed.

According to a Swiss journalist _ who was recently in Jugoslavia, the trial and execution —of Mikhailovitch was a calculated part of the scheme to prepare Jugoslav public opinion for the definite alignment of Belgrade’s policy with that of Russia. His contention that the trial offered the Government a unique opportunity of convincing the Jugoslav people of the need for an anti-Western policy is amply borne out by the evidence of the use made of the proceedings for propaganda purposes.

The commercial and friendship treaties with neighbouring countries and Marshal Broz-Tito’s state visits to Warsaw, Prague and Moscow are seen now by authoritative observers as part of the policy of the Belgrade one-party regime to make Jugoslavia the second Slav Power. So far as the Balkans are concerned, the diplomatic outlook for the Western Allies has indeed taken a turn for the worse.