WESTERN ENVOYS SEE STALIN AT CRUCIAL MEETING

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 August 1948, Page 5

WESTERN ENVOYS SEE STALIN AT CRUCIAL MEETING

(Recd. 10.15 a.m.) LONDON, August 23. The Western envoys met Mr Stalin at the Kremlin tonight in what is regarded as the crucial meeting in the negotiations over Germany. Mr Molotov was also present. The envoys drove simultaneously to the Kremlin. They were received in Mr Molotov’s anteroom and later ushered into the spacious conference room. The Western envoys were attending a celebration of Rumania s national holiday at the Rumanian Embassy when word of the Kremlin meeting was brought. The envoys broke away from the party and returned to their own embassies before proceeding to the Kremlin. Correspondents agree that the meeting tonight is the crucial one of the whole negotiations and will reveal whether or not there is any possibility of the Western Powers reaching agreement with the Soviet Union over Germany.

The British United Press correspondent in Moscow said optimism has been growing in the past 24 hours. The Western delegates at the weekend appeared cheerful. French circles, however, have not been optimistic about the result oi. the negotiations. French Foreign Office sources have been saying for days that the next meeting in Moscow would be with Mr Stalin, rather than Mr Molotov, and they have predicted it would be the last meeting. Service Chiefs in Conference In London today the Prime Minister, Mr Attlee, conferred for two and a-quarter hours with the service chiefs and several Ministers. Reuter’s diplomatic correspondent says it is believed they discussed the slowing down of the British, armed forces’ demobilisation rate. The service chiefs had a long meeting on August 17, at which the demobilisation plans were reviewed. The present release is at the rate of 20,000 men monthly, but before the end of the last session of Parliament, the Foreign Secretary, Mr Ernest Bevin, said the question would be reviewed if there was not an improvement in the Berlin situation. Three American officials and two German policemen who had been arrested by the Russians were released today. Americans Released American liaison officers brought Mr T. P. Headen to American military headquarters. He said the Russians had told him it was forbidden to photograph the Potzdamer Platz. They had kept him in a cell and later a lieutenant-colonel gave him "a sort of apology," saying he was surprised nobody had realised he was an American official. Two other American Government officials, Lieutenants S. Turner and R. M. Myers, were released at Uersfeld on the Russo-American border alter the Russians had held them captive for 18 days. Turner and Myers said they had been well treated by Russian standards. They were arrested on August 5, when they crossed into the Soviet zone, apparently inadvertently. The Russians also released Mr Paul Hoppe, the German police chief for the American sector of Berlin. The Russians seized him on August 21 when he tried to negotiate the release of several of his policemen whom the Russians had arrested. Another German released today was a British sector policeman who

was arrested near Potzdamer Platz on August 21. Gangster Methods The Berlin correspondent of the Associated Press earlier reported that the Russians had asked United States liaison officers to go to their headquarters and accept the release of Mr Headen, who was arrested yesterday. When Russians arrested Mr Headen, his wife screamed: "They have got my husband! but a truck into which two Russian military policemen had dragged Mr Headen, was driven off before anyone could make a move to stop it. Mrs Headen, with her daughter, aged 10, and her son, aged live, rushed to a British military police post, 50 yards away, and pleaded with the soldiers to help her husband. But there was nothing that they could do. Mrs Headen told reporters that she, with her husband and children, had gone to Potsdamer Platz to view the black market operators. Mr Headen was bare-headed, in a white mackintosh, with a camera, when he was seized. Mr Headen’s capture emphasises the chaotic gangster conditions produced in Berlin by the split in the police force.