TREATY FOR ITALY

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

TREATY FOR ITALY

REPARATION PAYMENTS CONFUSION PERSISTS (Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, July 5. After last night’s Foreign Ministers marathon session, in which an agreement on Italian reparations was reached by combining the points of the British. American and Russian proposals,'some confusion existed, even at the offices of the four delegations to-day, as to exactly what form the final recommendations took. The Ministers were at one time wrestling with no fewer than six simultaneous drafts on a single point, and Mr Bevin at one stage jokingly remarked: “If anyone here understands just what we are talking about I wish he would tell us.” Informed circles consider that the Foreign Ministers’ sessions will finish at the end of next week.

Mr Molotov’s stubborn introduction of one pretext after another for deferring the issue of invitations to the peace conference baffled the other delegations, says Reuter’s Paris correspondent. Mr Bevin, after a long argument, suggested that the Ministers should at least agree that invitations should be the first item on the agenda to-morrow. Mr Molotov then declared that the German question should not be put off, and announced that he had a declaration to make on the subject of Germany.

Mr Byrnes recalled that five or six days ago he wanted to take up the German question but Mr Molotov refused.