NEW NAVAL AGREEMENT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20827, 20 March 1931, Page 11

NEW NAVAL AGREEMENT

COMMITTEE TO DRAFT.

BRITAIN AMD DISARMAMENT.

(Received March 19, 5.15 p.m.) British Wireless. RUGBY. March 18. The first meeting of the Committee set up to draft in its final form the basis of the agreement on the . naval question which resulted from the recent conversations at Paris and Rome between the British Foreign Secretary and First Lord of the Admiralty, Messrs. A. Henderson and A. V. Alexander, and the French and Italian Foreign Ministers is to be held to-morrow. ,

The committed is composed of legal advisers and other representatives of the Governments of Britain, France and Italy. When the draft has been prepared, after consultation with the Dominions concerned, it will be submitted to the Governments of the United States and Japan. 1 In the House of Commons to-day Mr. Henderson said the question of the policy of the British Government at the Disarmament Conference to bo held in February, 1932, was already receiving careful attention and would continue to be closely studied. The Government had not received the report of the Committee of Experts set up by the League of Nations to consider the budgetary limitation of armaments, but that question undoubtedly must be carefully considered.

AMERICA AND JAPAN.

REFUSAL TO TAKE PART.

(Received March 19, 9.15 p.m.) LONDON, March 19.

The Daily Telegraph's diplomatic correspondent says America and Japan have refused to take part in the work of the committee. Therefore it will apply purely as an Anglo-Franco-Italian agreement and might even ho reduced to a FrancoItaliaji agreement with > Britain's general approval and a reservation concerning the right to increase destroyer tonnage if the Disarmament Conference does not reduce Franco's submarine tonnage below 82,000.