Majority Vote Will Abolish Veto

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26793, 9 June 1948, Page 5

Majority Vote Will Abolish Veto

Associated Press says that Military Government headquarters regard the application of a majority vote as most significant. It means the abolition of the veto, which has stalled Four-Power rule in Germany almost from the beginning. Walter Fisch, chairman of the Communist Party of Hesse in the American zone of Germany, said the L.ondon conference proposals would split Germany. They were an attempt to incorporate the German people into a system of Western military alliance, and would bring a new menace of war. “ The German people will never con • sent,” he said. The spokesman of the Berlin Social Democratic Party said he* regretted that Berlin was hot mentioned in the conference communique. The parly would not greatly object to a proposed board for international control of the Ruhr, “ if Ge* man interests were properly protected.” He added that the unification of the three western zones may be regarded as the first step towards reuniting Germany. The Associated Press correspondent in Frankfurt says that Western Germany’s top political leaders called for Russian zone representation in any new Germany Federal Government. The president of the German Bizonal Economic Council, Dr Eric Koehler. said the representative character of the German Government, which should have its headquarters in Frankfurt, would be made clear by including as Ministers without portfolio one or

two political leaders of the eastern zone, either members of the Christian Democratic Union or the Social Democrat Party. There is considerable adverse comment in political circles in Berlin on the detailed arrangements for international control of the Ruhr, particularly of the paragraph specifying that the vote for Germany should be exercised by the occupation Powers concerned. It is felt that this meant that German representatives would be little more than observers. In Vienna the International Socialist Congress “ noted with satisfaction ” the Six-Power agreement on the Ruhr, but expressed dissatisfaction with it because it felt that the Ruhr should not. be returned to private enterprise. The Congress adopted a resolution expressing the hope that the four occupation Powers would find a joint solution to prevent a division of Germany and. “ therefore, of Europe into halves.” The moderately Left Wing Paris newspaper France Soir said the London agreement on Germany meant the revival of the German danger. Ce Soir announced that it was a “ French diplomatic disaster,” but the well-known commentator, Pertinax, thought that, by accepting the recommendations, France could “avoid the worst and hope to modify the decision later.” Reuter's Paris correspondent adds that the latter is also the viewpoint of members of Cabinet.