REPORTED SAFE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 November 1941, Page 6

REPORTED SAFE

PLANE TAKING DIPLOMATS TO IRAN FORCED DOWN BY BAD WEATHER. AT TOWN ON CASPIAN COAST. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, November 14. .News has been received in London today that the Soviet plane which was conveying to Teheran M. Litvinov, the new Ambassador to U.S.A., Mr Steinhardt, the U.S. Ambassador, and Sil’ Walter Monckton, Deputy DirectorGeneral of the British Ministry of Informations, is safe. It was forced off its course on the journey from Kuibyshev and came down at Pahlevi, the Iranian town on the Caspian coast, about 200 miles north-west of Teheran. The American journalist, Mr Quentin Reynolds, was also a passenger. SOVIET DENIAL

NO CONFIRMATION OF PLANE BEING SAFE. ? LARGE PARTY ON BOARD. ■ (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.30 a.m.) LONDON, November 14. The Soviet Embassy at Teheran ■ repeats that there is no confirmation of the plane carrying Sir ■ Walter Monckton, M. Litvinov and M, Steinhardt being safe. Indeed it refers to an erroneous report of the landing of the plane as a result at the arrival of the regular plane at Pahlevi being mistaken for that of Sir W. Monckton’s plane. The mystery is heightened in London by the absence of any modification of the earlier Cairo report. The Associated Press of Great Britain Teheran correspondent reports that passengers on the plane, besides Sir W. Monckton, M. Litvinov and M. Steinhardt, included M. Litvinov’s English wife and child. Sir W. Monckton’s secretary, Mr Anthony Greenwood, Captain Bell, of the British Embassy at Moscow, an English journalist, Mr Philip Jordan, the American journalists Mr Quention Reynolds and Miss Alice Moats, the Iran Ambassador Saed, and either Air Vice-Marshal Collier or Group Captain Hallawell, who .has been British air attache at Moscow since 1937. Authoritative sources in London express the opinion that Group Captain Hallawell is more likely to be in the plane than Air Vice-Marshal Collier. "■