COMMUNIST REPLY AT U.N.O. TO CHARGES OF PERSECUTION

Grey River Argus, 12 October 1949, Page 5

COMMUNIST REPLY AT U.N.O. TO CHARGES OF PERSECUTION

Mindszenty Still Plotting With West Powers ! (Rec. 9.40). NEW YORK, Oct. 10. A special Political Committee of the United Nations to-day had a debate on the alleged violations of the fundamental fredoms in Hungary, Bulgaria, and Rumania.

The Ukraine delegate to the United Nations declared that Cardinal Spellman, Catholic Archbishop of New York, gave Cardinal Mindszenty thirty thousand dollars two years ago to finance a. plot against th e Communist regime in Hungary. The statement was made by M. Dmitri Manuilsky, who is the Foreign Minister of the Ukraine.

M. Manuilsky also told the special committee that the United States was backing what he called “revolutionary activities of the imprisoned Hungarian primate”. M. Manuilsky also said that Mr Selden Shapin, the former United States Minister al Budapest,.had given Cardinal Mindszenty instructions for the overthrow of the Hungarian Government.

M. Manuilsky denied that Cardinal Mindszenty’s trial had any connection with religious freedom. He said that the Cardinal was tried “as an agent of a foreign Power, trying to saddle Hungary, by the aid of American bayonets, with discredited Hapsburgs”. He said that Cardinal Mindszenty had originated his alleged plot after meeting Archduke Otto in the United States.

M. Manuilsky also said that Britain and America would like to see in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania, a resurgence of Fascist power through the adoption of similar policies to those policies being pursued in the Western zones of Germany. The inevitable conclusion, he said, was that “imperialist reaction has made espionage, murder, conspiracy and other forms of malfeasance the main arm of their struggle against peoples’ democracies”.