QUICK SOLUTION URGED

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 20, 21 December 1944, Page 5

QUICK SOLUTION URGED

GREEK POLITICAL MANOEUVRES LONDON, Dec. 20. "Von Rundstedt's offensive brutally underlines the impc .rtive necessity of ending the present hostilities in Greece," says the Times in a leading article. "It was never plainer than now that every Allied soldier is exclusively required for fighting the common enemy. There are signs that certain politicians in Athens are playing for time, hoping that British military strength, by breaking the resistance, may remove the need for concessions and compromises. It is a grave resnonsibility for the British to make it clear in Athens that a solution by a forcible victory is not being sought. ''No solution could be conceived that did not secure the assent and obedience of the many-sided National Liberation Front, which has commanded positive and active support in the urban quarter and other large sections of tho Greek population. The E.A.M.'s title to consideration is not erected merely on numbers, though its supporters un doubtedly exceed in total influence any other group of Greek opinion. It is based on the contribution to the na tional resistance to the invader. "It can firmly be said that no Government is practicable or just which is not headed by a man acceptable to the resisters and which is constituted, in both membership and policies, upon the resistance as the foundation.

“There is no ground in the statement of the proposals' that were made on behalf of the E.A.M. last week either for seeking to impose unconditional surrender as a term of peace or for assuming that they are a collection of brigands and revolutionaries. On the c’ptrary, all the evidence suggests that it is the anxious wish of the National Liberation Front to end the fighting. “Three steps are immediately necessary: First, the appointment of a regent, preferably Archbishop Damaskinos, which is just as essential a first step as the disarming of the E.L.A.S. ; secondly, the Regent to form a new provisional Government round a core of active Ministers; thirdly, the British forces to return to the only duty the people of Britain would wish to see—the preservation of order with an even hand and the rebuilding of the shattered Greek economy.”