MINISTERS’ DEPUTIES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26176, 12 June 1946, Page 5

MINISTERS’ DEPUTIES

DISCUSSIONS ON ITALY LITTLE PROGRESS MADE LONDON, June 10. The chief Soviet delegate at the meeting of the Foreign Ministers' deputies, Mr Gusev, turned down the British proposal that a four-Power commission should fly to Libya to investigate on the spot the wishes of the

inhabitants of Tripolitama and Cyrenaica about their future, says Reuter’s Paris correspondent. Mr Gusev said: “If such a commission went to Tripolitania and Benghazi it would be able to get only the views of officials, who would tell the commission that the Arabs wanted to remain under the colonial regime.” The deputies, with only four days before the Foreign Ministers again meet, have not much chance of doing anything more than producing for their chiefs a skeleton draft of the treaty with Italy, consisting largely of headings to subjects to be treated, with the texts of the various delegations’ proposals attached. Clauses for which agreed texts exist are few and far between, and they do not cover what Mr Molotov called the three fundamental issues—colonies, reparations, and the future of Trieste.