16 NATION TALKS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22586, 15 March 1948, Page 5

16 NATION TALKS

ARRIVALSJN PARIS EUROPEAN RECOVERY BUSINESSMEN'S PROPOSALS (10.30 a.m.) PARIS, March 14. The delegates of 16 nations are now arriving for the Marshall Plan conference which will open tomorrow. The French Foreign Minister, M. Bidault, today received the Greek Foreign Minister, M. Tsaldaris, and the Turkish Foreign Minister, M. Sadak.

The Italian Foreign Minister, Count Sforza, said on the Paris express: “It is high time to realise that our major duty is to organise Europe.” The British Foreign Secretary, Mr. Ernest Bevin, is due in Paris tomorrow morning in time for the opening session in Quai D'Orsay.

Experts of the 16 nations afterwards will meet at the luxurious R'oyal Monceau Hotel. The International Chamber of Commerce, representing the businessmen of 10 countries, will submit to the conference a programme for European recovery. It declares “Existing resources of capital and equipment must be fully utilised before any country has a moral right to claim aid.” The programme advocates a temporary reversal of the tendency towards shorter working hours, balanced Budgets, making nationalised industries pay, and reductions in the number of Government servants.

Western European representatives today welcomed the passing of the European Recovery Programme Bill in the United States SenateM. Bidault said it was “a great encouragement” to the efforts of Europeans to become united. Count Sforza said it constituted a moral event of the utmost importance. Mr. Bevin, according to a London message, said he with the French and Benelux Foreign Ministers would sign a flve-Power treaty in Brussels next Wednesday