DESPERATE STRAITS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26227, 10 August 1946, Page 7

DESPERATE STRAITS

COUNTRIES RECEIVING AID PLEAS FOR CONTINUANCE GENEVA, Aug. 8. Speakers from five European countries receiving U-N.R.R.A. aid— Czechoslovakia, Poland, Greece, Jugoslavia, and Austria—urged at the plenary meeting of the U.N.R.R.A. conference that international relief in Europe should continue in 1947. The leader of the Czech delegation, M. Vaclav Majer, Minister of Food, expressing concern at the cessation of the administration’s activities, said the country deficit in 1947 was expected to be about £45,000,000. He warned against endangering the results already achieved by assistance from U.N.R.R.A.

M. Hilary Mine, Polish Minister of Industry, said the end of relief activities would be the prelude to a great economic disturbance, increased black market, a rise in prices generally, and social instability.

Professor Zenophon Zolotas, the Greek representative at the administration’s Washington headquarters, claimed that it was difficult to believe that any country was in a more desperate position than Greece. If U.N.R.R.A. relief ended, its sudden removal would mean the return of starvation, despair, and the risk of Greece falling bapk into a state of chronic incapacity to recoverChina’s, representative. Dr Om Li, suggested that the United Nations members contribute to a common fund to meet the needs of- future disasters. Jugoslavia’s delegate, M. Vosislav Saventic, said the country’s deficit next year would be about £75,000,000, and the harvest was threatened by the continued drought. The Austrian representative, Herr Karl Schuler, said Austria needed £52,000,000 for food supplies in 1947, and the rehabilitation of the country had not yet been tackled. 8