Delegates Gather For Marshall Plan Talks

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 March 1948, Page 5

Delegates Gather For Marshall Plan Talks

(Recd. 10 a.m.) PARIS, March 14. The delegates of 16 nations are now arriving for the Marshall Plan conference, which will open tomorrow. The French Foreign Minister, M. Bidault, today received the Greek Foreign Minister, Mr Tsaldaris, and the Turkish Foreign Minister, Mr Sadak. The Italian Foreign Minister, Count Sforza, said on the Paris express: “It is high time we realised that our major duty is to organise Europe.” The British Foreign Secretary, Mr Ernest Bevin, is due in Paris tomorrow morning in time for the opening session in the Quai d’Orsay.

The International Chamber of Commerce, representing the businessmen of 10 countries, will submit to the conference a programme for European recovery. It declares: “The existing resources of capital equipment must be fully utilised before any country has the moral right to claim aid.” The programme advocates temporary reversal of the tendency toward shorter working hours, balanced budgets, making nationalised industries pay and reductions in the numbers of Government servants. Western European representatives to day welcomed the passing of the European Recovery. Programme Bill in the United States Senate. M. Bidault said it was a “great encouragement” to the efforts of Europeans to become united.

Count Sforza said it constituted a moral event of the utmost importance. Work Of Conference

The conference will devote the first two days primarily to' policy statements. The next two or three days’ work will be at a high official level, when the conference will set up and frame the terms of reference for the working party, which will dralt the constitution for a continuing organisation of the participating Powers. The working party also will draw up a multilateral agreement, pledging continued economic co-operation.

It is expected that the party’s work will take three or four weeks. The conference will disetiss the extent and method of German representation at future meetings of the cooperation committees.