Progress At Paris

Northern Advocate, 17 March 1948, Page 5

Progress At Paris

PARIS. Tue. (10 a.m.). —The permanent "committee of officials” took over virtually all the practical work of the Marshall Plan conference following yesterday’s session, and will continue after the session today. The committee is expected to report favourably to the full session on four points for "organised recovery”:— <1) A future multilateral treaty on mutual economic aid; (2) A fully-fledged international organisation with regular statutes;' (3) Western Germany to resume its place in European economy; (4) A bill of particulars on what American goods Europe needs. The committee is expected to ask the full session to agree to the second two points on the spot and to commission the working body to draft the first two. The working body would then arrange to call another full conference when their treaty and statutes were ready. DIRECTION TO EXPERTS The European Recovery Conference in Paris ended after directing its experts to draw up the statutes of the permanent international organisation and the articles of the treaty to bind it. The conference voted unanimously for representatives of the AngloAmerican and French zones of Germany to be independent memgers of the committee for reconstruction. The occupation authorities, with the assistance of “competent officials,” presumably German, will represent the zones. • Mr Bevin, in his closing speech, said the fate of Europe and the world would be decided by the intensity of their work in the next few months. “The war against poverty and want will be won.” he said. “We must be ready to go into immediate action as soon as the European reconstruction programme is decided.” CLOSED MEETINGS The Associated Press” correspondent says the experts will continue thenwork in closed meetings and only periodically release their decisions. A report on the progress so far will be submitted to the United States Government for consideration in connection with the Marshall aid programme. The conference took no action on a Portuguese proposal to include Spain. Portugal’s Foreign Minister (Senor da Mata) had urged the conference to consider admitting Spain to the work of European construction “at an opportune moment.” Spain had great agricultural resources and had made many contributions to European culture, he said. Russian Zone Move

BERLIN, Tue. (10 a.m.) —Officials in the Russian zone of Germany today announced plans for accelerating trade and economic ties with Soviet-domin-ated countries in South-East Europe.

The first will be the conclusion of a trade agreement with Czechoslovakia.

M. Josef Orlopp, the Soviet zone’s Trade Minister, announcing this, said the Soviet zone did not exclude European countries which “honestly want to cooperate with us.” Poland and the Soviet zone todaysigned a £14,000.000 trade agreement. The Soviet zone will supply wood, scrap iron, machinery and chemicals, in exchange for Polish coal, iron, nonferrous metals, and foodstuffs.