SOVIET MINISTER IN PRAGUE

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 February 1948, Page 5

SOVIET MINISTER IN PRAGUE

The allegations which have been made in Prague, that the Czech General Lew Prch'ala and the exiled Polish General Anders had “engineered a Czech anti-State plot in the interests of a certain foreign Power” would be investigated. A British Foreign Office spokesman made this announcement at a press conference in London today. Asked whether Britain had the right to concern herself with happenings in Czechoslovakia, the spokesman said it was natural for any democratic country to concern itself with the fate of another democracy. The spokesman added that the presence in Prague at present of a Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister, Mr Zorin, had been noted with interest, since another Soviet Deputy Foreign

Minister, Mr Vyshinsky, had visited Bucharest in March, 1945, when Croza’s Communist-controlled Government came to power in Rumania. The Moscow radio said today that the Western European press, in “publishing provocative stories that the Communists had engineered the Czech crisis, is attempting to justify reactionary Czech politicians’ endeavours to sabotage the nationalisation programme at the expense of splitting the Government. “There is no crisis, except in the reactionary camp,’\added the radio. “The Czech reactionary elements chose the present pre-election moment for provocation because the National Front is gaining strength and becoming a really broad union of all the country’s democratic forces, not merely a coalition of the parties and leaders.