WESTERN POWERS SIGN OCCUPATION STATUTE FOR GREATER BERLIN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27081, 16 May 1949, Page 5

WESTERN POWERS SIGN OCCUPATION STATUTE FOR GREATER BERLIN

New Zealand Press Association—Copyright Rec. 10 p.m. 'LONDON, May 14. The *three Allied commandants of Western Allied Kommandatura have signed the occupation statute for Greater Berlin, says the Associated Press correspondent in Berlin. The statute grants Germans in the Western City Assembly direct administrative control of the city under limited Allied supervision. The Western Powers reserved to themselves only such powers as necessary to ensure the fundamental aims of the occupation. The new statute is similar to the occupation statute under which the Western Powers will supervise the future Western German State. The official statement said: “Although the military governors decided, because of the special circumstances, that Berlin should be included as a State in the initial organisation of the German Federal Republic it has been decided to apply the same liberal measures to Berlin, reserving to the Allied Kommandatura only such powers as are necessary in the present exceptional circumstances to ensure the city’s security, good order, and financial and economic stability.”

The occupation Powei's reserve rights to deal with disarmament, reparations, foreign relations and trade, refugees, and banking, and also the supervision of civil liberties until the latter rights are guaranteed by the Berlin Constitution. Reuter’s Berlin correspondent says the United States commandant, Brigadier-general Frank Howley, stated after signing the statute: “ The document we have just signed marks a tremendously important step .toward making the unity of Berlin possible if the people on the other side of the town desire it.” The British United Press correspondent in Berlin said the Western Allied commandants said they would agree to the unification of Berlin only on the basis of the occupation statute. Russia would have to accept the statute to return to the Allied Kommandatura. The statute stripped Russia of the veto power which it previously exercised over the city government. United States officials announced that Russia has agreed to resume payments for reparations shipments from Western Germany, says the British United Press correspondent. The Russians owe the equivalent of about £5,250,000 under the Potsdam Pact in which it was specified that Russia should pay for 15 per cent, of reparations from the West, with reciprocal deliveries of food, coal and other raw materials. The United States officials said that following the Russians’ declaration, the Western Allies were ready to resume the shipment of West German reparations which had been allocated to the Russians but frozen by the counter-blockade. Thirty-five trains arrived in Berlin - from the British zone in the 56 hours after the lifting of the blockade. They were 20 coal trains, six supply trains and nine passenger trains. That full agreement with the Russians on the resumption of east-west German trade was likely to be reached by May 18 was the forecast made by Mr L. F. Wilkinson, chief United States economic adviser, to-day He said the conference between the economic, advisers of the four military governments brought almost complete agreement. The conference adjourned till May 18. Reuter’s Frankfurt correspondent says Mr H. Collisson, head of the Special Economic Co-operation Administration, said the European Co-opera-tion Administration was prepared to restore fully the pre-war pattern of German trade with the Eastern European countries. He said that it would not draw Western Germany into the Russian orbit of influence but would pierce the iron curtain and probably spur Eastern European interest in trade with the west. “Western Germany is ready to sell Eastern Europe anything except war materials. The iron curtain will fall under the impact of revised east-west trade. It is self-evident that western political ideas will flow eastwards on the heels of the exports,” he said.

Moscow radio, in an English language broadcast, summing up progress in the Soviet zone of Germany in the last four years, said economic development was continuing with increasing impetus. Enterprises formerly owned by the Nazis or war criminals had passed into the German people’s hands. There had also been democratic land reform. A two-year plan provided for a 35 per cent, increase in output over the 1947 figure by the end of 1950.