TANGIER OCCUPIED

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 168, 15 June 1940, Page 7

TANGIER OCCUPIED

SPAIN TAKES ACTION. FRENCH CONCURRENCE. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) Received June 15, 9.45 a.m. MADRID, June 14. An official statement says that by agreement with France 1200 Spanish Moroccan troops have occupied Tangier in the name of the Sultan of Morocco in order to safeguard the neutrality of the Tangier International Zone. A Spanish destroyer is standing off the port.

The occupation of the International Settlement at Tangier was effected without incident. The present Administrator of the zone is a Frenchman. The Spanish colony is the largest in the settlement, and the Italian is also considerable. The British colony is comparatively small. The gendarmerie are commanded by. a Spaniard, and the municipal forces are under a Frenchman. The Tangier Statute, of which the signatories are Britain, France, Spain and Italy, and the acceding powers are Portugal, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway, places the zone under "a regime of permanent neutrality and prohibits any act of hostility on land, sea or in the air by, against, or within the zone. It also prohibits military establishments within the zone. By an understanding reached in the early days of the Spanish Civil War it was agreed that, in. the event of troubles arising in the zone with which the Administrator’s force was unable to deal, the Administrator could appeal to the Powers concerned to send forces to deal with the situation. According to the British Official Wireless the British Consul-General at Tangier this morning received a communication from the Spanish authorities stating that the object of the occupation by Spanish troops of the International Zone was to secure the neut-rality-of the zone. It was added that the occupation was of purely a provisional character. Tangier, a port; in North-West Africa, lies on a small bay in Morocco, 38 mi’es by sea south-west of Gibraltar. The population is 53.000, including many Spanish Jews Tangier was taken by tlio Portuguese in 1471. In the 17th century it was given to Charles 11 of England as Catherine of Braganza’s dowry, and England retained it till 1683. It was subsequently a rest of pirates. By the Franeo-Spamsh Agreement of 1912 the town, with a zone to landward of it on all - sides, became autonomous under an International Council and a municipality,