Testing Time For Empire Task Facing Prime Ministers’ Conference

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 October 1948, Page 5

Testing Time For Empire Task Facing Prime Ministers’ Conference

(Recd. 10.55 a.m.) LONDON, October 10. A quarter of the world’s population will be represented by statesmen from nine countries at the formal opening of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ conference at 10 Downing Street. The statesmen will include seven Prime Ministers, as Mr Mackenzie King cannot attend because of illness. It would have been Mr Mackenzie King’s last important official engagement before retiring as Canadian Prime Minister. The Prime Minister of Australia, Mr Chifley, is not-attending.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps, in an exhaustive review to the conference after the opening, will touch upon the relationship of European recovery to British Commonwealth recovery and plans deal with the dollar position as it affects the sterling area. Empire Bloc Not Intended

“Regardless of the potential or actual danger of the present international situation, it will be made clear at the outset of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference, which will open in London on Monday, that there is no desire or intention of the United Kingdom to promote ‘ganging up’ or the formation of a Commonwealth bloc,” says Reuter’s political correspondent.

“The conference will not make policy decisions. The discussions will be of a much more informal character.

“Although the main interest may be in the group of plenary sessions which has been arranged, much of the most valuable work may be done in separate meetings between individual Prime Ministers. The conference will encourage ‘cards on the table’ exchanges and the frankest ventilation of views among the individual Dominions. “This frankness will also be invited in the crucial plenary sessions on world and Commonwealth economies, defence and the international situation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Stafford Cripps) will open the world economics debate on Monday with a voluminous review, high-lighted by reactions to his recent conferences in the United States and Canada. India and Pakistan

“The decision on India and Pakistan on their ultimate relationship to the British Commonwealth may be largely influenced by the conference, as it will give them an unexampled opportunity to assess the merits of Commonwealth association. “The Indian Prime Minister (Pandit Nehru) and the Pakistan Prime Minister (Liaquat Ali Khan) will thus be able to give their advice when the time comes for the Indian and Pakistan Constituent Assemblies to decide for or against their continuation of Commonwealth membership.” The Sunday Times says: “The subject of defence will be divided into regional parts of western and eastern. It is considered that conclusions will be reached more quickly if Atlantic and Arctic defence, in which Canada is specially interested, is discussed separately from the defence problems of South-east Asia, which is the particular concern of the southern and Asiatic Dominions. “The representatives of all Dominions, however, will attend both regional discussions. The Western Union, although not a separate item on the agenda, will be discussed. Britain has no reason to expect from the Dominions anything but cordial support for it. z “A standing Commonwealth committee in London is one of the suggestions in the air. Particular problems like the adjustment of Imperial preference may also cause some difficulty.” “Testing Time for Dominions” “The Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference will be a testing time for both old and new Dominions,” says a special correspondent of The Times. “As the widest possible identity of outlook on fundamental questions is taken for granted,

procedure can be dispensed with, and the fullest advantage taken on elasticity. “There is no agenda, and the only possible comparison is a conference between members of a family.

“The conference is an essential part of the Commonwealth’s permanent machinery of consultation. No delegate, however, comes to it committed, and there will be constant reporting back to Governments. The conference marks the first occasion that there has been an association of East and West of this kind, and it holds many possibilities for the future.” Pakistan Urges Equality

The leading Parkistan newspaper, Dawn, described the visit of the Prime Minister of Pakistan (Liaquat Ali Khan) to the Dominion Prime Ministers’ Conference in London as “a final fact-finding mission.” “We earnestly urge Britain and the other Commonwealth nations to give up their pose of impartiality and socalled policy of equality of treatment, and make up their minds whether they are going to help us when we need their help, or leave us in the lurch out of fear of India because it is the bigger country,” said the newspaper. “The whole burden of the defence of the North-western Frontier of the Indo-Pakistan sub-contin-ent rests on the shoulders of Pakistan, and not India.”