SOVIET POLICY REVERSAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27090, 26 May 1949, Page 7

SOVIET POLICY REVERSAL

Return to Four-Power Control Of Germany PROPOSAL REJECTED BY WEST . New Zealand Press Association—Copyright Rec 10 p.m. LONDON, May 25. The Three Western. Foreign Ministers—Mr Ernest Bevin (Britain), Mr Dean Acheson (United States), and M. Robert Schumann—at yesterday’s meeting of, the Foreign Ministers’ Council in Paris, rejected a proposal by the Soviet Foreign Minister, Mr Andrei Vyshinsky, for a “return to Potsdam” in Germany. That, the Western Ministers said, would undo what they had done towards the rebuilding of the Western zones of Germany. Mr Vyshinsky has set everybody wondering whether this conference of Foreign Ministers is going to be able to achieve anything at all, says the diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Herald cabling frqm Paris. It had been taken for granted, he points out, • that its central problem was to try to get agreement if possible on the ways of setting up an elected German Government for a united Germany. Mr Vyshinsky threw all that aside. He proposes to scrap noi only all that the Western , Allies have done towards giving the Germans self-government, but also everything in that connection that Mr Molotov was vehemently advocating two years ago.

Mr Vyshinsky asked for Four-Power economic control of the Ruhr and proposed a return to th'e Four-Power Control Council for Germany, with a German administrative body under its direction in Berlin. The council was discussing the first item on the agenda —the problems of German unity, including economic and political principles and Allied (Four-Power) control. The correspondent of the Daily Herald adds that the'Soviet Government now calmly suggests simply re-estab-lishing the machinery of Four-Power control which was set -up in 1945, which never worked efficiently, and which the Russians themselves deliberately broke up last year. s lt would have, as was suggested at Potsdam, a German administrative body of officials working under the Allied Control Council, but no German Government, no German Parliament and no German elections. It is the most astonishing aboutturn that even Soviet diplomacy has ever made. Its purpose is obscure. Maybe Mr Stalin thinks, after the recent Soviet zone elections, that a free constitution would be the end of Communist influence in Germany. Maybe this 44 back to Potsdam ” proposal is just annoyance. “If the Germans will not elect a Communist Government, do not let them elect a Government af all.” But the Russians must have known that there is no chance whatever of the Western Allies accepting such a plan. And they must have known that it is going to alienate' even their remaining German friends. Mr Vyshinsky also proposed the reestablishment of the inter-Allied Kommandatura of Berlin and the all-Berlin Magistrate In spite of an accusation made by Mr Vyshinsky in a long prepared statement that the Western Powers had split Germany by breaking the Potsdam Agreement,, the atmosphere at to-day’s meeting was calm and not at ai)y point hostile. | Control of the Ruhr Mr Vyshinsky, speaking first at a three-hour session, said the best method of international control of the Ruhr (which is now . under a SixPower authority made up of Britain, France, the United States, Belgium, the Netherlands. = and Luxembourg) would be to create a body representative of the Four Powers with representatives of other States bordering on Germany sitting on it in a consultative capacity. German economic bddies should also be represented. He then advocated reintroduction of Four-Power control in Berlin and the establishment of a German State Council sitting in Berlin with economic and administrative responsibilities. Mr Vyshinsky said this council, which would be drawn from both zones, would act under the supreme authority of the Allied Control Council, which should resume its activities on its former basis. Observers note that Mr Vyshinsky’s proposal would amount to a return to the Military Government which was recently abolished by the Western Powers for their three zones. Mr Acheson criticised Mr Vyschinsky’s proposals and recalled how the three western zones had been united by the Western Powers in an attempt to give such unity as was possible to Germany in the absence of Soviet co-. operation. He said the Western Powers were determined not to undo what they had already done to give growing responsibility to the Germans. He said the Western Powers would be happy to add the Soviet zone to the other three. Return to Potsdam

A return to the machinery of Potsdam would be like asking a convalescent patient to go back to his original condition when he had had the use of his limbs restored. M. Schumann said that if FourPowei unity in Germany was to be re-established, it could not be done by reverting to the start and making all the old mistakes afresh. This would be to sterilise all that had been done in the past 18 months. Mr Ernest Bevin cited what he termed Soviet of the Potsdam Agreement. He said the Soviet action which had stalled the FourPower machinery in Germany had proved very costly to Great Britain, which was forced to take measures to alleviate this cost by forming first the economic Western German Bizonia, and now the Western German State. Mr Bevin said that if the West had not taken these measures Germany would be a “cesspool of starvation.” He said the British Government stood for an all-German Government “ freely elected.” He felt that the Foreign Ministers should start at the stage already reached in Germany, and not go backwards. Great Britain favoured reducing the elements of control in Germany and giving more power to the Germans. After the conference a correspondent asked the Soviet delegation if similar international control to the Ruhr was intended for the Eastern Silesia industrial area, which is now under the control of Poland. The Soviet spokesman replied that the question was irrelevant-since “part of Silesia falls in Poland'' as you well know.” He added that the Eastern German boundary question was closed as far as the Russians were concerned. He maintained that the Western Powers agreed to this boundary at Potsdam. (The West has never recognised this Soviet claim.)