SOVIET WILL NOT DETACH EAST GERMANY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22655, 4 June 1948, Page 5

SOVIET WILL NOT DETACH EAST GERMANY

(10 a.m.) LONDON, June 3. Russia has no intention of severing the Soviet zone from the rest of Germany or incorporating it into the Soviet Union in any form, Marshal Sokolovsky, the Soviet Military Governor, told members of the Christian Democratic Union, according to the Soviet Information Bureau. Marshal Sokolovsky also gave an assurance that the Soviet Union would support all German aspirations towards the country’s unification. “Germany's unity requires the formation of one single all-German democratic Government,” he said. He added that a just peace “could be made only with a united Germany.” Marshal Sokolovsky assured the Christian Democrats that no new expropriations of and/or property would take place in the Soviet zone. The British United Press correspondent in Berlin says that Marshal Sokolovsky's statement was made on May 27 but released only last night, probably in answer to the six-Power agreement dealing with the future of the Ruhr and Rhineland after the general occupation of Germany ends. The Christian Democratic Union is the strongest non-Communist political party in the Soviet zone.