BRITISH ARMS

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 December 1946, Page 8

BRITISH ARMS

SUPPLY TO tßKffi

SLAV PLAN TO WT OFF ' WEST MACEDONIA

ATHENS COMPLAINT TO UNO (Flee. 2;io p.m.),,..... ... .... „ ...

LONDON, Dec, 2. . Britain plans to give Greece nearly 10,000 additional pieces of armament, mostly heavy automatic weapons, and , has approved,an increase in the Greek army of about 5900, sayss the Associated Press Athens coftesppn; d6nt, quoting a h soli tee; The Army. Will be increased tb nine batta 116ns. . ... The need for heavy automatic I Weapons became obvious during the fighting against W6li-armed guerrillas in Northern Gteecel,. . ... On the eve of leaving for New York to place the Greek observations on the guerrilla • fighting before, the Security Council, the Greek .Prime Minister (Mr. Tsaldaris) said .that Greece believed the guerrillas were gritting foreign help. ... Greece, he said, was not making an appeal, but was asking the Security Council to give aid in maintaining the Greek bordrirs. The 2nd Greek Army Corps has announced that 59 guerrillas were killed anti 40 were captured in “mopping up” campaigns in the Thessaly, Karditsa, and Volos areas. A well-planned campaign to cut off Western Macedonia from Greece and proclaim an autonomous .Slay state is in full swing, says the Daily Telegraph correspondent in Athens. The so-called bandits are gaining ground in spite of the operations of The Greek Army. A cordon is being drawrt right across from the Albanian border to Mount Olympus. This line is marked by rebel strongholds and mined roads and villages from which the gendarmie have withdrawn because it is not strong enough. Road communications from the south are open, but are frequently threatened. Massacre raids and other incidents can be plotted on the map all the way from Albania to the border of Thrace by the Slav autonomists and their non-Slav Communist collaborators. '

The breaking off of Macedonia from Greece dominates the rebels’ campaigns. The possible consequences for Greece are that the remainder of northern Greece, with its port, Salonika, would be cut off from Athens. Bulgaria then would not refrain from claiming Thrace and eastern Macedonia.