WESTERN ENVOYS’ FOURTH LONG TALK AT KREMLIN

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 August 1948, Page 5

WESTERN ENVOYS’ FOURTH LONG TALK AT KREMLIN

(Recd. 9.45 a.m.) LONDON, August 12. The Western envoys in Moscow this afternoon had their fourth meeting with Mr Molotov since the present negotiations opened. Mr Frank Roberts (Britain), General Bedell Smith (American) and M. Chataigneau (France) saw the Soviet Foreign Minister at the Kremlin for nearly three hours. When the Western envoys left the Kremlin, General Bedell Smith said he did not think this would be a lasting meeting. All three envoys looked more cheerful than after the previous meetings. The Associated Press Moscow correspondent reports that General Bedell Smith said: *We are still without any conclusions. The British United Press correspondent at Moscow says it is believed, but without official confirmation, that there will be another meeting with Mr Molotov, probably tomorrow, and a final meeting with Mr Stalin two days later.

American military police forced the withdrawal of a squad of Russian military police and Soviet-controlled German police who crossed into the American sector of Berlin today, says the Associated Press Berlin correspondent. No Violence American police officials said there was no violence. Most of the Russian police stopped at the border while the German forces crossed into the American sector, but some Russians helped the Germans to search American sector houses. In another incident at Potsdamer Platz, in central Berlin, Sovietcontrolled German police, supported by Russian military police, crossed into the British and American sectors to arrest Germans in the streets. These were forced to withdraw when a squad of Western German policemen rushed to the borders. In both cases the Russians claimed the raiders were rounding up blackmarketeei s. Demonstration in U.S. Zone Three hundred thousand German workers throughout the United States zone of Germany left shops and factories to attend demonstrations against the United States Military Government and high prices, while mass meetings, called by trade unions in all the major cities throughout Hesse State, demanded that General Clay approve a law to give the workers more rights in the management of factories, says the Associated Press Frankfurt correspondent. A mob in Frankfurt overturned a a United States jeep and chased a press photographer.

“Keeping step with the Moscow press, Russian-controlled newspapers in Berlin have resumed their own attack on Allied policy in the West," says the Berlin correspondent of The Times. “Typical comment is that by the Berliner Zeitung, which refers to Western Germany as having become ‘an El Dorado for war criminals.’ Shells Fired In Air Corridor Reuter’s correspondent in Berlin says that the pilot of an American Skymaster saw anti-aircraft shells bursting in the American air corridor at a height of between 8000 and 10,000 feet. The pilot said that the shells burst “at a comfortable distance from the areoplane,’’ but well inside the corridor. There were several Russian aeroplanes towing targets. The conclusion of the Moscow talks cannot long be delayed, according to The Times diplomatic correspondent. The Western Powers have never faltered from their stand that the Berlin blockade must be lifted before the beginning of negotiations and, if a basis of negotiation has been found, an early settlement may be expected. The Times points out that the Russian press has been emphasising its concern over the proposed setting up of a provisional German regime in Western Germany.