ALLIED KOMMANDATURA STILL WORKING : RUSSIAN WALK-OUT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22667, 18 June 1948, Page 5

ALLIED KOMMANDATURA STILL WORKING : RUSSIAN WALK-OUT

(10.30 a.m.) BERLIN, June 17. The Kommandatura in Berlin continued working normally this morning. The Russians attended meetings of three committees.

The French spokesman said that the inter-Allied Secretariat will meet tomorrow to receive any request for an Allied Control Council meeting.

British officials said they were prepared to believe that the Russian walk-out yesterday was final until the Russians further indicated their intentions.

The official Soviet newspaper Taegliche Rundschau claimed that Colonel Howley provoked the Russian walk-out by leaving the meeting to go to bed when the Soviet proposal came up for discussion. It added that Colonel Jelisarov declared before departing that he would not continue to participate in the meeting as long as Colonel Howley did not apologise.

The Associated Press correspondent in Berlin says the American commandant, Colonel Frank Howley, conferred in the early hours of Thursday with General Lucius D. Clay, the American military Governor, on the Russian walkout from the Kommandatura. the last functioning four-Power governing organ in Berlin. Colonel Howley, expressing surprise that the Russians left the meeting at which “considerable agreement” had been reached, told the press earlier that he could only assume the Russians wished to dramatise the situation. Berlin correspondents of news agencies quote other possible reasons for the walk-out. The Russian-licensed A.D.N. news agency reported that the Russians were heard to say as they left the room “Colonel Howley left improperly. He must apologise.” The German DWS service, Dcna, said that the Russians walked out when General Ganeval suggested a discussion of General Kotikov’s 14 point programme be dropped because of the late .JjpUX*.

The British United Press correspondent says that British, American and French representatives at the Kommandatura meeting yesterday accused the Russians of trying to subordinate Berlin to the Soviet zone and deprive the city of economic freedom.

Brigadier E. R. Benson, Britain, accused the Russians of restricting transport to keep goods in Berlin so that they could be sold in the Russian zone. Reuter’s correspondent says that Western representatives criticised the new Soviet regulation that parcels for the Western zones must be handed in at the Soviet sector post oflices as a unilateral regulation which had resulted in a hold-up for nearly three months of 116 truckloads of parcels. The Soviet delegate, Colonel Jelisarov, claimed the regulations were necessary because postal packets for other parts of Germany had to pass through the Soviet zone.

The protest against the regulations was dropped from the agenda but the delegations reserved the right io jaj^e j&twfriwt latest ~ k