BIG REDUCTIONS IN U.S. STAFF IN GERMANY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22827, 23 December 1948, Page 7

BIG REDUCTIONS IN U.S. STAFF IN GERMANY

(N.Z.P.A. —Reuter—Copyright.) (11 a.m.) LONDON, Dec. 22. A drastic slash in the American Military Government’s operations in Germany is planned for 1919 and will cut payrolls by 60 per cent, says the Associated Press correspondent in Berlin,

It has been drafted in Washington by the Army Department and Colonel J. T. Duke, who is representing General L. Clay. The plan is known to call for a 32 per cent reduction in American Military Government personnel in the spring and another 30 per cent cut later in the year. The trimming of the Military Government to the top supervisors is a policy dependent to some extent, however, on the progress Western Germany makes towards becoming a federal State. The present staff is estimated at 4000 Americans, mostly distributed through the United States occupation zone. The representatives of the three Western Powers met yesterday in Berlin and announced that the Allied Kommandatura, which had not met since the Russian represenative walked out on June 16, would immediately resume its functions. The joint three-Power statement said that the refusal of the Soviet reprementatives to attend the Kommandatura could no longer be allowed to obstruct the proper and legal administration of Berlin, even though without Russian co-operation its decisions would take effect only in the Western sectors of the city. The Times correspondent in Berlin says that the hope that the Russians will to turn to the vacant chair is expressed rather tnan entertained and there &re no indications that they have any such intention. The correspondent adds that the Russians have already declared that they regard the decision to resume the work of the Kommandatura without them as consolidating the division of the city which, they say, the Western Powers have brought about by design, and all their propaganda now harps on the parallel between the splitting of the country and of the capital. German police of the Soviet sector oi Berlin stopped trams from the Sovief sector to the Western sector, searched passengers and seized goods being taken over the border, says Reuter’s correspondent in Berlin. They took 23 cwt. of coal, 7£cwt. of potatoes, 2cwt. of onions, 22 loaves of bread and 30 packets of tobacco.