REPORT BY COMMITTEE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 256, 26 September 1935, Page 7

REPORT BY COMMITTEE.

BASIS OF SETTLEMENT

PLAN FOR REORGANISATION

(British Official AVireless.) Received September 26, 12.15 p.m. RUGBY, Sept. 25. The report to the League Council of its Committee of Five, which has now ,been communicated to the parties in tho Italo-Abyssinian dispute and the members of the Council, was published at Geneva this morning. The report includes the replies of the parties to the committee’s suggestion for the basis of negotiation and contains also a summary of the oral observations made by the Italian delegate.

The Note handed by the chairman of the Committee to the representatives of the two Governments oil September 1 18 states that the Committee, which i had been instructed to make a general ! examination of Italo-Ethiopian relajtions and seek a pacific settlement, had endeavoured to find a basis of negotiation and solution. So far it had been I guided by the obligation of respecting ! the independence, territorial integrity j and security of, all States which were members of the League, and by the I necessity of ensuring good neighbourly relations between States as members of the League. The Committee’s suggestions for a basis of negotiation are revealed in tlie report, including a charter of assistance to take the form of inviting acceptance by the Ethiopian Government of a plan of reform drawn up by the Council dealing wit'll public services which require organisation. The suggestion is made in this plan that commissions of foreign specialists be appointed to organise a corps of police and gendarmerie responsible for ensuring the application throughout the Ethiopian Empire of the existing order or future laws, for tho prohibition of all personal slavery, for regulating the carrying of arms by persons not belonging to a regular army or to the police, and for gendarmerie forces for policing centres in which Europeans reside and maintaining order in frontier territories. , • i A reorganisation of the mixed courts, education, and public health, with a principal adviser placed at the head of each group of public services, is suggested. Tlie committee proposes that the plan should be reviewed at the end of five years by the Council of tho League. A note is added to the report outlining tho Italian observations and stating that the Ethiopian Government, in its reply to the committee’s suggestions, declares its willingness to open negotiations immediately upon the basis of them. The close collaboration at Geneva between the French and British delegations was again in evidence to-day bv the consultations between Mr R. A. Eden and M. Laval. If the arrangements at Geneva allow Mr Eden conveniently to leave for a day or two he may possibly take tlie opportunity at the week-ena to return to London.