BLUNT SPEAKING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26198, 8 July 1946, Page 5

BLUNT SPEAKING

MOLOTOV CHALLENGED GOING BACK ON WORD (Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, July 7. Reuter’s correspondent says Mr Bevin directly challenged Mr Molotov of using obstructionist tactics. He said Mr Molotov, after agreeing to hold the conference, was now devising plans to veto it unless the other Ministers agreed with Russia on all the rules of procedure. Mir Bevin pointed - out that the other Ministers agreed to Italian reparations on the understanding that Mr Molotov agreed to go ahead with the peace conference. “We kept our bargain, but you seem to be going back on yours and it is better that the world should know it.” . . The pledge given to the dominion Ministers during the London meetings wds one reason Mr Bevin gave Mr Molotov for refusing to impose readymade procedure on the nations attending the peace conference, says the Exchange Telegraph’s Paris corresppndeht. Mr Bevin said the dominion Ministers asked him whether the conference would be responsible for its own procedure, and he assured them it would: Mr Bevin said: “I gave my word to the House of Commons and the dominion Ministers, and I am not going back on it.” The correspondent adds that Mr Molotiv's repetition of the words “ rubber stamp ” finally had the delegates bursting into laughter each time he used the phrase and he used it more than two dozen times. The Associated Press correspondent reports that Mr Bevin and Mr Byrnes argued that the previous insistence on the rules of procedure might indeed be described as turning the conference into a rubber stamp, but letting the conference decide its own , , es was anything but that. Mr Molotov replied that the conference -if left alone would turn itself into a rubber stamp.