END BELIEVED TO BE NEAR

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 August 1948, Page 5

END BELIEVED TO BE NEAR

“The meeting which the Western envoys are to hold with the Soviet Foreign Minister (Mr Molotov) at the kremlin this afternoon may be their last,” says the diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. “Whether agreement with Mi' Molotov is-reached or not, the envoys wish to see Mr Stalin again before the negotiations are ended. “Events at the week-end suggest that the three Powers’ policy on Berlin and Germany is clear cut. ’ The correspondent adds: “It is possible to read from a Moscow radio broadcast during the week-end that the Russians are anxious about the economic situation ol the eastern zone, where the interruption of trade with and through Western Germany is seriously affecting the Russian economy.” The diplomatic correspondent ol The Times says that there has been no slowing up in plans for carrying out the Western Powers’ decisions for the establishment of a West German form of government—“plans which have caused so much anxiety in Moscow’ ever since they were announced.”

The Western Military Governors will confer today at Frankfurt with German political leaders, and the British and United States Governors tomorrow will meet German politicians, industrialists, and trade union-

ists at Dusseldorf to discuss Ruhr production and the reparations dismantling programme. “The Berlin air bridge has shown its effectiveness, but living conditions have reached a degree of difficulty that must be hard to imagine outside Berlin,” says the Britishlicensed Berlin Telegraf. “For three months Berliners have received no fresh meat. Vegetables and fruit have become rarities, and milk is reserved for babies. It is natural that the eyes of all Berliners are on the Moscow negotiations.” The Sovietlicensed Vorwoerts says: “The present state of affairs cannot continue. The present unbearable situation can only be settled by peaceful i'ourPower settlement of the whole German problem.”