RUSSIA IN GERMANY

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 August 1946, Page 7

RUSSIA IN GERMANY

BRITAIN SEEKS STATEMENT ON POLICY ECONOMIC FUSION QUESTION (Recd. 11.30 a.m.) LONDON, August 8. The Foreign Office, in a statement on inter-zone co-operation in Germany circulated to Russia, America and France, says that Britain never accepted Russia’s claim for 10,000,000, dollars reparations from Germany. /

‘Unless and until Germany as a whole has an export surplus, Russia by the unambiguous terms of the Potsdam agreement is not entitled to take as reparations goods currently produced or stocks. This agreement cannot be unilaterally repudiated by one of its signatories.”

The Russian suggestions that certain products be sent to the Western zone in exchange for industrial equipment sent to Russia is described as irrelevant. The statement declares that Britain would be glad to learn at the earliest times whether Russia agrees on the principles which must govern the treatment of Germany as an economic whole and the taking of reparations, and, if so, whether Russia was ready to establish immediately the necessary machinery in Germany to put the principles into practice. Britain has accepted the Russian proposal that a Four Power commission should investigate the effect that economic union of the occupation zones in Germany would have on German trade, transportation, ti avel and similar problems. MUST KEEP OUT OF RUSSIAN ZONE (Rec. 2 p.m.) LONDON, Aug. 8. British wives joining their husbands in Germany this month have been warned by the Control Commission not to go without their husbands in the British sector after dark or the Russian sector at any says Reuter’s Berlin correspondent. A booklet being prepared for them warns that they are liable to arrest if they go into the Russian sector.