PROTECTIVE SPHERES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26707, 28 February 1948, Page 7

PROTECTIVE SPHERES

NEW ECONOMIC BLOCS SECRET PLANS AT HAVANA CONFERENCE N.Z.P.A.—Copyright. Rec. 9 p.m. NEW YORK, Feb. 26. While hundreds of delegates representing 60 nations are busy in the committee rooms redrafting the Geneva Charier for the International Trade Organisation to reduce world trade barriers, in their private offices they are secretly developing plans for new economic “ protective ” spheres, says the Havana correspondent of the New York Wall Street Journal. “ The Moslem countries are planning to sponsor a Near East bloc, which they believe will stretch from the Mediterrean to India. The leaders of tnis sphere hope it will include a dozen countries ranking from Turkey and Egypt in the west to Afghanistan, Fersia and Pakistan in the east. It is understood that Jewish Palestine will not be included but Christian Greece is involved. ‘This proposal would involve rnugMv 178,000,000 people, and about 40 per cent, of the wonds known mi reserve. Imports into the area would be controlled in order to build up local industries and the sphere would develop plans financed by funds to be sought in the United States. The Argentine hopes to create a similar preference bloc 'in South America, including Chile, Uruquay Bolivia and Peru. Additional projects are a Colombia bloc —Colombia, Educador, Venezuela —and a Central American bloc, which may stretch from Panama to Mexico. The British imperial bloc is being strengthened. Although tariffs have been cut, even more effective trade controls are being evolved through state direction of buying and selling on world markets. Delegates here complain bitterly of these British methods claiming that they ainf at more restrictions on world trade, not fewer. ; . The Soviet bloc must be numbered m these economic spheres. It includes Russia. East Europe, the Balkans (except Greece), and is currently being tightened by completing control of such countries as Czechoslovakia. West European delegates have learned of these plans for new economic blocs and they are now talking of forming their own bloc— more defensive and more preP "ential than the customs uhions hitherto discussed.