BRITAIN WILL NOT BE “CHEATED OR CHIVVIED OUT OF TERRITORIES ANYWHERE”-Premier

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22569, 24 February 1948, Page 5

BRITAIN WILL NOT BE “CHEATED OR CHIVVIED OUT OF TERRITORIES ANYWHERE”-Premier

(11.30 a.m.) LONDON, Feb. 23. Asked in the House of Commons whether he w ould consider asking’ Australia to send a cruiser to the Falkland Islands, the Prime Minister, Mr. C. R. Attlee, said he appreciated Mr. Chifley’s offer, hut the British Government did not see any necessity to ask Australia to send a ship.

Last week Mr. Chificy said that if Britain asked for a cruiser the Australian Government would consider the request, and added: "We always have a friendlv interest and desire to help.” Mr. Attlee said the cruiser Nigeria would arrive in the Falklands shortly and would visit the dependencies with H.M.S. Snipe. Mr. Attlee assured Mr. Anthony Eden that the Government would not "be cheated or chivvied out of British territories anywhere in the world.” Reuter’s correspondent in Buenos Aires reports that the Argentine naval saundron todav anchored off Deception island, the Antarctic territory claimed by the Argentine. Later today, President Pcron’s portrait will be unveiled at

the Argentine naval base established there in January against protests from Britain. The Chilean President, Renor Gonzalez Videla, will ask the Chilean Congres to sanction the establishment of a new ‘Department of the Antarctic” with headquarters at Navarino in Magallanes province in (lie extreme south of Chile. The Chilean Government newspaper La Nacion last night said the announcement of the United States “hands off” attitude toward the conflicting territorial claims in the Antarctic has caused surprise and disillusionment in various South American countries. The newspaper said: “It would be advisable at the next Pan-American con-

ference at Bogota to clarify this problem which is not a problem at all in the Unfit of maps and treaties of mutual assistance, but it has been converted into a two-edged sword in the first practical test case in which American solidarity has been put into play.” Rear-Admiral R H. Ciuv.en, tornierly oi the United States Navy, who was Admiral Richard Bvrd’s second-in-com-mand in the 1947 Antarctic expedition, said in a speech that he was certain the Antarctic was not a source of uranium. He suggested that the tecenf interest in South Polar regions was clue m ainlv to the desire of nations, chiefly for reasons of national prestige, to acquire some portion of the last unexplored continent.