VISIT TO PARIS

Southland Times, Issue 21728, 14 June 1932, Page 5

VISIT TO PARIS

BRITISH MINISTERS CONSULTATION WITH FRENCH COMING CONFERENCES (British Official Wireless.) Rugby, June 11. Mr Ramsay MacDonald, accompanied by Sir John Simon, left London this morning for Paris. They will be the guests of the French Prime Minister, M. Herriot, at dinner this evening, when the discussion, which will be continued to-morrow, on questions awaiting consideration at the conferences in Lausanne and Geneva will be opened. This consultation with the French Government follows a further exchange of views between the British Prime Minister and the new Foreign Minister of Germany. The conversations must, in the nature of things, be purely preliminary. Special points to be raised by M. Herriot in the Anglo-French conversations were discussed at yesterday’s meeting of the French Cabinet. Later, according to the Paris correspondent of the News-Chronicle, M. Herriot said that as the British and French viewpoints stood at present there was very little difference between them. During their Paris visit the British Ministers will stay at the British Embassy. The times of their departure for Switzerland have not yet been definitely fixed, but it is anticipated that they will leave early next week, visiting Geneva on the way to Lausanne, where the Reparations Conference opens on Thursday. The other British delegates for Lausanne, Sir Herbert Samuel, Mr Neville Chamberlain and Mr Walter Runciman, are to leave London on Tuesday. The Times says: "The Government of the United States is taking no part in the Lausanne Conference, and the immediate business of the British and French Governments at the Paris meeting to-mor-row is to discover as between themselves what measure of legal cancellation is possible.” PROGRESS MADE INFORMAL DISCUSSIONS. (Rec. 7.0 p.m.) Paris, June 12. M. Herriot, Mr MacDonald and Sir John Simon spent many hours in informal discussions during the weekend, and it is believed they have done much to clarify the situation regarding Lausanne. A communique issued states that the talks have “shown a community of views permitting us to foresee a just and efficacious solution of the problems to be studied at Lausanne.”

It is understood that one of the first problems will be a prolongation of the present reparations moratorium until after the American Presidential election; secondly, an armaments holiday for a period of a year to be accompanied by a reduction in all countries’ defence budgets.