Reconvening Paris Economic Talks

Northern Advocate, 13 January 1948, Page 5

Reconvening Paris Economic Talks

LONDON, Mon. (10 a.m.).—A Foreign Office spokesman said that France and Britain had agreed to reconvene the Paris Economic Conference of 16 nations, which met after the announcement of the Marshall Plan. Britain and Fi'ance would issue invitations to the 14 other powers concerned.

The seci-etary of the Labour Party (Mr Moi'gan Phillips) after a meeting of the committee of the International Socialist Conl’erenca, announced that the British Labour Party, with the French Socialist Party as joint sponsor, intends to call a congress of Socialist parties from the European countries coopei'ating in the Marshall Plan to meet in London on January 21 and 22.

The German Social Democratic Party will be invited. The labour correspondent of The Times says the decision to call such a conference independently of the International Socialist Conference is an indication of the Continental desire to maintain contact between eastern and western Socialist parties. The western parties could doubtless have secured adoption of a motion for a Marshall Plan meeting, but to have done so would have caused the eastern representatives considerable embarrassment and would possibly have forced them out of the conference altogether.