YUGOSLAVIA MAKING AMENDS BY HONOURS AT FUNERAL

Northern Advocate, 26 August 1946, Page 5

YUGOSLAVIA MAKING AMENDS BY HONOURS AT FUNERAL

(Received 11.20 a.m.) LONDON, August 25. YUGOSLAVIA is providing an aerial and military escort and a guard of honour for the funeral cortege of men who perished when the second United States transport plane was shot down on August 19. The assistant American Military Attache at Belgrade (Colonel Stratton) said a cavalcade of Yugoslav military vehicles was picking up the bodies from the present burial place near the village of Krop Ivnik and taking them to Ljubljana.

Vehicles carrying the caskets, drapsd with American flags, will be followac by others carrying ranking officers ol the Yugoslav 4th Army. A Yugoslav guard of honour will stay with the coffins at Ljubljana until they ore placed on Mr Patterson's private plane, which will be escorted by a squadron of Yugoslav fighters to Belgrade. An American State Department representative at Eled commented that Ihe Yugoslav arrangements were entirely satisfactory. Moscow radio, quoting Pravda’s foreign editor, today said: “It was due to the statesmanlike wisdom of little Yugoslavia that the incident over the shot-down planes was not further aggravated. The United Stales sent an impossibly sharp-worded Note. "The incident, nevertheless, is an instance of pressure by a big power on a small power. It shows clearly that the Anglo-Saxon bloc intends to revert to power politics.’’ TITO CLIMBS DOWN The State Department announced that messages from the United States Ambassador to Belgrade (Mr Richard Patterson) “indicated” that Yugoslavia had complied with the American ultimatum concerning the shooting down of United States planes, but it remained to be seen what efforts Yugoslavia would-make to right the wrong done. Mr Patterson reported that, in the course of a conference. Marshal Tito emphasised that he was extremely sorry for what had happened and promised to meet the American demands. He said the incidents would not be repeated. Yugoslavia, said Marshal Tito, would always accept in reasonable numbers planes forced off their course by weather, less of direction or mechanical difficulties. He suggested that means be worked out for such planes to signal their distress. Marshal Tito claimed that the incidents were not the result of special orders having been given and said emphatically that they were not retaliation for Yugoslavs having been shot recently by an American border patrol. j The Yugoslav fighters acted in normal defence of the frontier, he added. The American transport brought down on August 19 was 50 kilometres inside Yugoslavia. He had repeatedly given warning against a continuation of unauthorised flights over Yugoslavia. General McNarney’s headquarters in Germany announced that regular direct air transport flights between Vienna and Udine were being resumed today. A senior officer said pilots would be instructed, as hitherto, to carefully avoid flying over Yugoslavia.

TRANSLATION MISTAKE An earlier report that Marshal Tito refused to "accept,” or had “rejected,” the American Note was tire result of a wrong translation, says the Associated Press correspondent in Belgrade. The Yugoslavs now explain that the statement, which quoted ihe Belgrade radio, meant that Marshal Tito had "set aside" the American Note as being no longer relevant, as the American airmen forced down on August 9 had been released.

At a press conference in Belgrade, Marshal Tito accused the American authorities of deliberate aerial reconnaissance of Yugoslav military installations along the Italo-Yugoslav frontier.

“Systematic flying over our territory has not been an accidental departure from routes because of weather,’ lie said, “but has been intentional, by pilots who do not respect our sovereignty and fly o'vrr our boundary without permission, in order to shorten the way, as they themselves state." He said Yugoslavia asked nothing but respect for its sovereignty. A search party headed by Mr Richard Patterson found the wreckage of the second American plane shot down (on August 10) cn a wooded hillside in the Julian Alps near the Austrian frontier, says the Associated Press correspondent in Belgrade. The party learned on reliable authority that nobody parachuted from the plane. A member of the Yugoslav militia told them that at least five bodies were buried on August 21 in a common grave in the village of Koprivnik. The searchers also found a peasant who told them about providing a common coffin for bodies found in the wretkage of the piane.

Mr Patterson has arranged for the opening of the grave. A Paris message states that M. Kasanovic, Yugoslav Ambassador to the United States, who is a member of the Yugoslav peace delegation, told the press that the Turkish officer was being held because an investigation had shown that his flight over the area was "not accidental.” BODIES IN WRECKAGE A message from the United States Ambassador in Yugoslavia stated that the leader of the Yugoslav military patrol which found the American plane brought down on August 19 north-west cf Bled, said the wreckage contained two bodies with parachutes. The remains of other bodies indicated that five or six other persons had been hilled.

The Belgrade correspondent of the Associated Press says the Yugoslav Government declared that 110 British and American military planes had flown over Yugoslavia territory since the two incidents in which American transport planes had been forced down by Yugoslav fighters.