ANOTHER BLOCKADE BY THE RUSSIANS

Wanganui Chronicle, 12 April 1948, Page 5

ANOTHER BLOCKADE BY THE RUSSIANS

U.S. TROOPS STOPPED FROM TELEPHONE MAINTENANCE Berlin, April 11. The Russians refused to renew entry permits for United States troops maintaining telephone and telegraph cables from Berlin across the Russian zone to the United States zone. The Russians said the German Reichspost Communications Company would maintain the lines under Soviet supervision. The Russians offered assurances that the cable would be kept functioning. The United States Deputy Military Governor (Major-General Hays) requested the Russian military administration to reconsider the decision. The Soviet Deputy Military Governor (Lieut.-General Mikhail Dratvin), replying to the Note sent to the Russians by the British Military Governor (General Sir Brian Robertson) regarding proposals for an investigation of the Viking-Yak collision on April 5, expressed perplexity at General Robertson's “suggestion that disagreement should result in separate reports.” Dratvin added: “The submission of separate reports by experts could take place only if the experts had been previously briefed in a spirit of an unobjective investigation." Dratvin said General Alexandre would be the senior expert on the Soviet side and he had instructed him to contact the British experts. The British experts will be headed by Air Commodore R. N. Waite, chief of the Air Branch of the British Military Government’s Combined Services Division.

Major-General W. E. Hall, of the American Military Government, said the Americans were resisting a Russian attempt, under the guise of new “air safety regulations,” to restrict of the air corridor connect 1 ing Berlin with the western zone. Tne Russians are seeking to force withdrawal from their zone of American and British maintenance crews working on telephone and teleprinter cable links with the west. The Russians refused to renew sector passes, which expire on Thursday for these technicians, thus threatening to cut telephone and telegraph communications between the city and the British zone.

The Coblenz radio stated that the Soviet authorities had informed American authorities that the Russians, from April 15, were going to control American telephone connections between Berlin and Frankfurt. The radio added that the Americans maintain two intermediate telephone stations at Leipsig and Weimar, which "are the only links in the Soviet zone at American disposal linking Berlin with the entire world and, in particular, with Washington ”