“GREAT SIMILARITY”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26713, 6 March 1948, Page 7

“GREAT SIMILARITY”

FIVE NATIONS’ SUBMISSIONS PROPOSALS FOR WESTERN UNION LONDON, Mar. 4. A communique issued in Brussels after the five-Power meeting there of representatives of Britain, France, and the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg) said the three Benelux countries had submitted a draft for an agreement, examination of which revealed a “ great similarity between the views of the five nations.” j It is understood that the Benelux proposals go far beyond the principles of the Dunkirk Treaty between Britain and France and of the Pan-American Union agreement. The Benelux countries advise a close regional agreement providing mutual assistance and peaceful settlement of all difficulties between the signatories, presumably by the Internationl Court of Justice at The Hague. In a message to the French Foreign Minister, M. Georges Bidault, to mark the anniversary to-day of the signing of the Anglo-French Dunkirk Treaty. Mr Ernest Bevin declared that the treaty had proved a strong stabilising factor in a troubled world. “The past year’s events have shown that we were building even more solidly than we realised, and that the alliance was to become ever more necessary to Europe’s peace and stability. “We are now agreed that this deep Anglo-French friendship should be extended to other good neighbours in the west. We are working out the form of a western union which will, I am sure, save and reinvigorate the moral and material values of our western ciilisation.”

M. Bidault, replying, stated that Great Britain and France, closely joined, must unite the free countries of Europe and, first of all. Western Europe.