DOMINIONS’ ROLE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22199, 9 December 1946, Page 7

DOMINIONS’ ROLE

GERMAN TREATY PACTS WITH SATELLITES RUSSIAN CONCESSIONS (10 a.m.) NEW YORK. Dec. 8. The British Dominions which contributed to the defeat of Germany must be assured of a voice in the framing of the German peace treaty, declared the British Foreign Secretary, Mr. Ernest. Bevin, at the Foreign Ministers’ Conference. . Mr. Bevin pointed out that the Big Four had made basic decisions on the treaties for the Axis satellites before the little nations had been called in at the Paris Peace Conference. Mr. Bevin was supporting an American proposal that deputies should be ap-

pointed now to begin hearing the views of Germany’s small neighbours and the British Dominions.

The Russian Foreign Minister. M. Molotov, wanted to postpone all work on the German treaty until late in February.

The United States Secretary of State, Mr. J. Byrnes, proposed that by April 1 the total number of occupation troops in the whole of Europe should be reduced to 620,000 with a further 25 to 33 per cent reduction by 1948.

The Ministers adjourned without reaching a decision.

A London message states that, commenting on Mr. Bevin’s message to the British Cabinet that the five peace treaties with Germany’s former satellites have now been completed, “except for three or four points of the smallest detail,” The Times’ diplomatic correspondent recalls earlier negotiations in London and Paris when progress could be achieved only by the slow._ natient process of erosion with each side content to gain an inch of ground andwhen at the times the negotiations themselves seemed to embitter relations between East and West. In the end all sides made concessions, but none was more remarkable or more unexpected than M. Molotov’s during the last stages in New York and it is these, the correspondent says, which caused most speculation in London and elsewhere.

It is quite evident, the correspondent adds, that M. Molotov was under instructions from Moscow to reach an agreement if at all possible, and some diplomats suggest that during all the 15 months of negotiating, he has simplv been following a traditional form of diplomacy, namely, fighting stronelv and tenaciously to gain the best available terms for the Soviet Union. He made concessions in the end. but only when convinced beyond all doubt, that the Western Powers were not to be moved further.