Molotov Hopes For Compromise

Northern Advocate, 24 November 1947, Page 5

Molotov Hopes For Compromise

(New Zealand Press Assn—Reuters —Copyright)

LONDON, Sun. (11 a.m.). —M. Molotov arrived in London by air for the Big Four Foreign Ministers’ meeting. Reuters Berlin correspondent reports that M. Molotov conferred with Russian military headquarters at Berlin on his way to London.

Sources close to the Russian authorities said the conference discussed consequences of a possible failure of the Foreign Ministers’ talks and paid particular attention to the possibility of withdrawing the Soviet representative from the Allied Control Council.

M. (Molotov, however, is reported not to have abandoned hope of compromising on Germany and Austria. Russian circles in Berlin expect the London conference to be a long one.

M. Bidault, who is a Popular Republican, will have the fairly solid support of all Centre and Right Wing groups when he represents France at the Foreign Ministers’ Conference in London, where he is accompanied by M. Maurice Couve de Murville and M. Herve Alphand. says the Paris correspondent of the Associated Press. While maintaining the position ot the Socialists and Republicans in international politics ' throughout his post-liberation career as Foreign Minister, M. Bidaull has also played n

careful game, guarding Communists’ interests as well.

In London he will probably urge political unification of Germany under a loose federation of German states, subject to provisos that: (1) Germany is so supervised os never to become a threat to France; (2) France is assured of sufficient Ruhr coal to achieve reconstruction ahead of Germany;

(3) The Ruhr to be detached from Germany and nationalised; (4) The Saar Valley to be incorporated within French economy.