End Of Blockade Is Beginning Of East-West Struggle

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22940, 7 May 1949, Page 5

End Of Blockade Is Beginning Of EastWest Struggle

(10 a.m.) LONDON, May 6. The decision to raise the Berlin blockade and resume four-Power negotiations between Russia and the Western Powers is welcomed in London as a step towards the solution of the German problem, but not as a solution in itself, says Reuter's diplomatic correspondent. Officials and observers of the three Western Powers in London sounded a note of caution based not on any lack of goodwill or desire to find an agreed solution for the whole of Germany, but on a realistic appreciation of the situation existing today.

This underlying situation, which the Council of Foreign Ministers will have to face in Paris, is that Germany is geographically part both of the Eastern European system which has been developed since the war under Moscow's leadership and of a Western Europe steadily crystallising into a co-ordinated political and economic unit.

Observers in London consequently predict that the coming meeting in Paris will either develop into a sincere effort by both sides to reach a limited practical agreement for an interim settlement in Germany or will degenerate into an effort to win public opinion throughout Germany for a political solution on Eastern or Western lines. The three Western Powers will, it is clear from Mr. Bevin’s statement in the House of Commons yesterday, approach the Paris conference in a firmer sense. Meanwhile, between now and M;?y 23 —the date of the opening of the Paris meeting—American, British and French experts will join forces to prepare in detail for all foreseeable eventualities that may arise in Paris. As an official of the Western Powers put it, ‘the lifting of the blockade marks the beginning, not the end. of the real problems involved in finding an overall solution for Germany.”