FRANCO-SOVIET TREATY SOUGHT

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 17977, 3 January 1933, Page 5

FRANCO-SOVIET TREATY SOUGHT

REPAYMENT OF £120.000,000 REPUDIATED DEETS m n * » - ■ ■ 1 ' ONE-FOURTH OFFERED BARIS, Nov. 26. Acting upon a Soviet request, the French Government on Friday joined Soviet officials in a new study of trio possibilities of reaching a commercial accord. The conversations took place at the Ministry of Commerce between representatives of the Ministries of Commerce, Agriculture, Foreign Affairs and Finance, and two commercial attaches of the Soviet embassy. These talks received wide and in some cases excited notice in the Paris press, but it was learned from a reliable source that any satisfactory conclusion of trie, negotiations is far off, if indeed, there can bo any hope of their ultimate success. This is true, despite the fact that France is going to sign a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union very soon. Conversations for a Franco-Soviet trade agreement take place here frequently, but the gap dividing the. French demands and Soviet offers has always been so great that the talks are quickly dropped as hopeless. The chief obstacle is the question of Russia’s prerevolutionary debts to France, which the Soviet Union disavowed. They reach a sum of more than 1)120,000,000, generally ill the form of Government bonds, in | which thousands of Frenchmen kept their life savings.

FRANCE REJECTS OFFER

France no longer hopes to he repaid 100 per cent., hut she wants a substantial amount. The Soviet Government about a year ago offered to recognise about a quarter of them if Franco would open large credits here for her and at the same time permit partial payment in kind. This 'offer France flatly rejected. \Vhat seems to have revived the negotia-* lions again is the heavy purchase of Soviet oil by the French, which purchases give Russia a large, export surplus in France- In the first nine months of this vear Soviet Russia 'exported about £5.000.000 worth of products all told to France, while France exported to Russia only 32.00*0,000 francs’ worth of goods. Of the Soviet exports 260.000,000 francs' worth represent oil sent in fulfilling the contract with Petrolina Francaiso. On the French side it was denied that the conversations should even he dignified by the word “negotiations. ” It was said the situation was so complicated and the divergencies in viewpoint so great that all that could he done now was to resludy the question, and that such a study undoubtedly was going to take a long time.