FRENCH MAY NOW RATIFY WESTERN PACT ON GERMANY

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 June 1948, Page 6

FRENCH MAY NOW RATIFY WESTERN PACT ON GERMANY

LONDON, June 7. , “The French Foreign. Minister (M. Bidault) has been severely criticised even by members of his own party (the M.R.P.) for making too many concessions in the six-Power agreement oh Germany which the London conference evolved,” says the Paris correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. “M. Bidault, however, has made a last-minute effort to regain the support of influential members of the Government coalition, and there is now more optimism that the National Assembly may be persuaded to ratify the agreement. ‘The arrival of the secretary and the chairman of the British Labour Party, Mr Morgan Phillips and Mr J. Griffiths, is interpreted in French circles as an endeavour to obtain French Socialist support for the agreement.” Russia Informed The French Deputy-Military Governor in Germany (Major-General Roger Noiret) has handed the text of the six-Power agreement on Germany to Marshal Sokolovsky, the Soviet Military Governor in Germany. Renter’s correspondent in Dusseldorf says that the Prime Ministers of the three Western zones of Germany, in a communique issued after a conference, declared that international control of the Ruhr was not justified. They added that Germany herself was willing to prevent the Ruhr being built up as a menace to other countries. A special correspondent in Dusseldorf of the Manchester Guardian, quoted by the London correspondent of the New Zealand Press Association,

says that the Germans are apprehensive about the reported decisions of the six-Power London conference, particularly the references to the proposal to set up an international authority to control the Ruhr. Distrust in Germany “Few of them,’ ’the correspondent adds, “welcome the proposal to form a separate Western German. State, and it is plain that the establishment of such a State will be supported. only with extreme reluctance and as an unpleasant necessity which must be regarded as strictly temporary in character. “In some quarters there is considerable mistrust of the Western Allies’ assertions that they will continue to try to come to terms with the Russians. “The Germans also see little prospect that they can agree with the Western Powers about the control of the Ruhr. They claim that the policy of using only the raw material production of this area is mistaken and that a much better purpose would be served if the Ruhr were allowed to manufacture goods Europe badly needs and for which it established big markets in the past.”