AGREEMENT ON TRADE WITHIN GERMANY REACHED

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 May 1949, Page 5

AGREEMENT ON TRADE WITHIN GERMANY REACHED

LONDON, May 21.—Informal and tentative agreement had been reached with the Russians on financial aspects of inter-zonal trade, said Major-General George P. Hay’s the acting military Governor of the United States zone of Germany, quoted by Reuter’s Berlin correspondent. “If we can settle the question of how to pay for goods exchanged between Berlin and the Western Germany the whole thing could be settled right away,” he said. “The present difficulties over rail and road traffic between Berlin and the Western zones would then disappear.” General Hays added that agreement, which he thought would be reached finally today, would enable goods to be exchanged without a direct exchange rate for the East mark against the West mark being decided upon under the 1948 interzonal agreement which lapsed during the blockade. Four-Power transport talks would be resumed on Monday to straighten out technical difficulties, such as the number of trains to enter Berlin and the right of German goods vehicles to use the Helmstedt autobahn.

The Berlin coreespondent of the Associated Press quotes General Hays as. admitting that there were a number' of discords. The Soviet had not yet replied to a request that American Signal Corps service zone to check cables. Moreover, General Vassily Chukikov, the Soviet Military Governor, had not replied to the three-Power protest over road traffic restrictions, although these had been waived, at least for the present. “The Russians fear that Western Berlin will quickly make a recovery comparable with that in Western Germany, with disastrous consequences to their own prestige in their zone,” says the Berlin correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. That explains why they have used every possible device to halt and delay German commercial traffic by road and rail between Berlin and the Western zones.

“The Russians have been surprised by the improvement in conditions in Western Berlin since the blockade was lifted. In a few days food and goods arrived in plenty in the shops, while what amounted to an economic blizzard struck the Soviet sector.”