POWERS TO CONFER

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22405, 12 August 1947, Page 5

POWERS TO CONFER

GERMAN INDUSTRY BRITAIN AND U.S. AGREE CONSULTING FRANCE LONDON, Aug. 10. The British Government has given full support to the United States’ proposal for an immediate three-Power conference on the problems of the level of German industry and the future management of the Ruhr coal mines, says Reuter’s diplomatic correspondent. The British Foreign Office spokesman said the Government felt France ought to be a party on both issues to any decision. The correspondent adds that the initiative the United States had shown, however, did not meet Whitehall’s hopes that eventually these problems would also be related to Britain s dollar shortages, but the Cabinet placed high hopes in the forthcoming talks between Britain and the United States on the dollar situation. It was the Government’s intention to be represented by high technical experts, and the spokesman categorically denied that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Dr. H. Dalton, would go to Washington. . ... British officials have given an indication that Britain would stress that the alternative to aid was world economic collapse. They foresee that the only adequate aid would be for the United States Treasury to buy up and hold any surplus sterling offered in New York. Resources to enable convertibility to be maintained are seen as the decisive aim of British policy, and the mere release from convertibility and the discrimination obligations of the American loan agreement would no longer suffice.