FOREIGN VOLUNTEERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23517, 4 June 1938, Page 15

FOREIGN VOLUNTEERS

REVISION OF DRAFT RESOLUTION THE SOVIET’S LATEST MOVE (British Official Wireless) RUGBY, June 2. The Chairman’s Sub-committee of the Non-intervention Committee, at its eighty-eighth meeting, considered a further revise of the draft resolution providing for the withdrawal of foreign volunteers. This revision granted in certain circumstances belligerent rights to the two parties in Spain, and provided for observation of Spanish frontiers by land and sea. The committee examined each of the outstanding questions, and the Soviet representative made a lengthy statement. Lord Plymouth (chairman) said the situation created by this statement was that as regards the three questions embodied in the recent British proposals, to which the Soviet hitherto had been unable to agree—namely, first, the method to be adopted by the commissions in counting and classifying foreign volunteers; secondly, the date of restoration of international observation of the Franco-Spanish frontier; and, thirdly, strengthening the sea observation scheme—the Soviet was prepared now to accept the first of these proposals and the second also, provided that if the actual withdrawal of volunteers did not start on the date prescribed in the plan there would be no further extension of the period in which international observation should be in force on the Franco-Spanish frontier. The Soviet’s agrement to the above points was, however, conditional upon acceptance by the International Committee of an arrangement by which international observing officers would be permanently stationed in all Spanish ports where it was possible to unload war material or land troops. The meeting agreed to consider the new situation created by the statement, and will meet again on June 10.