FIFTY-YEAR TREATY DRAFTED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22585, 13 March 1948, Page 5

FIFTY-YEAR TREATY DRAFTED

WESTERN UNION CONFERENCE ENDS BELGIUM PLEASED (10 a.m.) BRUSSELS, Mar. 12. It is officially announced that the Five-Power Conference on Western Union ended after the completion of the draft of a 50year treaty which British, French and “Benelux” Foreign Ministers will sign at Brussels on March 17.

A communique issued after the FivePower conference said the representatives are submitting the draft treaty to their respective Governments.

The treaty comprised economic, social culture and mutual assistance clauses within the United Nations Charters framework.

The English text of the communique used the term “defence” and not ‘mutual assistance,” as the French version was translated. The Moscow newspaper Izvestia called the Western Union pact "a plot against peace in Europe.” The Soviet Tass News Agency despatch from Brussels reported that the draft provided for the reorganisation of armies and the standardisation of armaments. Each Government would publish the treaty’s substance after final approval. The Belgian Premier, M. Spaak, said: “This is a good treaty. We are entitled to satisfaction with it.” The treaty’s political aim, says The Times’ correspondent Brussels, is to organise security of Western Europe so that the democratic traditions which the five countries have in common are safeguarded. There will also be reference to the importance of human rights. The economic clause, he adds, deals with the interests of the five countries and their overseas territories. Germany's part in European economic system will be defined at next week’s conference in Paris on the Marshall Plan proposals. The Associated Press correspondent says the pact commits the signatories unequivocally to Western ideas of democracy and groups them into a great sphere of mutual profit and development, including the world’s greatest colonial possessions. The British United Press correspondent says the mutual aid clause calls for automatic military assistance in the event of aggression. It is believed to have been worded loosely to enable the insertion of more specific clauses later. “Right to do Likewise” Winding up the debate of foreign affairs in the French National Assembly hist night, the Foreign Minister, M. Bidault, dealing with the accusation that the western bloc was being set up against other nations of the Continent said, according to the Times correspondent in Paris, that there existed at present 15 treaties of mutual assistance in Central and Eastern Europe. “Western Europe,” he added, “in the service of freedom, has the right to do what has been done elsewhere—not against but like others,”. The characteristics of the recent developments in Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary Poland and Czechoslovakia were extremely similar and, said M. Bidault, “we don't like them.” There was no time to be lost tn constituting what was left of Europe.The Government’s policy was approved by 419 votes to 183.