FRENCH QUOTA DISPUTE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 63, 24 February 1934, Page 9

FRENCH QUOTA DISPUTE

Negotiations Likely Soon

NEW ARRANGEMENT HOPED FOR

British Official Wireless Service. RUGBY, Feb. 22.

The French Government’s reply to the British Note on quotas and trade negotiations is being subjected to careful study. It is understood that it is conciliatory in tone and opens up a prospect of negotiations between the British and French Governments for the conclusion of a new trade treaty being begun in the near future. It will be recalled that two stipulations were laid down in the recent British Note—namely, that the French Government should carry out an undertaking at an early date to secure removal of the differentiation against Britain, and that they should in the meantime take no further steps to reduce the quotas for United Kingdom goods, including coal, entering France. Acceptance of those stipulations by the French Government would imply that the opening of negotiations is contemplated with the French quotas being retained in their revised form and the British measure of retaliation remaining in force. Speaking at Glasgow, Sir John Bimon mentioned that after what he described as a long and in some ways very unhappy controversy with the French there was every prospect that negotiations were now going to be entered into with the goodwill of both countries for new commercial agreements.