UNSETTLED ISSUES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25427, 7 January 1944, Page 3

UNSETTLED ISSUES

ALLIED FRONT WEAKNESS (Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 5. The prospect that an increasing area of Poland may in the near future pass into the occupation 'of the Red Army has directed fresh attention to the unsettled issues between the two Governments, comments The Times in an editorial. Their dispute constitutes the one conspicuous gap in the continuous United Nations political front. As long as it is not resolved it offers to the enemy one of the few consolations in. his present bleak prospect. The omission of all references to the frontier question as such in the Polish declaration is conspicuous, but by no means discouraging. It may ease the way for negotiations towards the settlement which alone can repair the serious weakness in the Allied front and at the same time establish a bastion of the permanent peace system to which the United Nations are pledged. The Russian Embassy in Washington, according to the British United Press, issued a bulletin stating: “The Red Army liberated workers in western Byelorussia (White Russia) and the western Ukraine from the yoke of the Polish usurpers. The people of Byelorussia themselves decided on the form of their State, and the Supreme Soviet acceded to their request and accepted them into the U.S.S.R. The Red Army is now again liberating Byelorussia. Th; time is near when free Soviet Byelorussia will again shine as a jewel in the brilliant cluster of republics of the U.S.S.R.”