RUSSIA DEMANDS AUSTRIAN RAILWAY STOCK AS WAR BOOTY

Grey River Argus, 29 October 1948, Page 7

RUSSIA DEMANDS AUSTRIAN RAILWAY STOCK AS WAR BOOTY

LONDON, October 27.

A British Foreign Office spokesman said that Britain would consider it fantastic that any claim for war booty should be made more than three years after the end of the war. He was commenting on a report that the Soviet Government had claimed a considerable amount of Austrian rolling stock as war booty. The spokesman added that in the British view, rolling stock would not fall within the recognised definition of war booty. Reuter’s Vienna correspondent quotes an authoritative source as saying that the Austrian Government would appeal urgently to the Western Allies for railway trucks and locomotives to prevent a breakdown of railway traffic and ensuing economic chaos following the Russian demand for rolling stock as war booty. Austria will protest to the Allied Council against the Russian step. “Austrian officials say that a Russian Note delivered to the Austrian authorities demands that virtually all rolling stock in the Russian zone of Austria be turned over by November 30 to the Russians as ‘war booty’,” says the British United Press correspondent in Vienna. “The following stock in the Russian zone of Austria includes 440 locomotives and 5775 coaches, and represents a third of all that Austria owns”.