Which Chinese Regime? West Must Decide

Wanganui Chronicle, 5 November 1949, Page 5

Which Chinese Regime? West Must Decide

NEW YORK, Nov. 4 (Recd. 9.55 pm) —The peace treaty with Japan and recognition of Communist China would probably be included in the agenda for a meeting in Paris of the British, French and United States Foreign Secretaries, said the “New York Times” in an article by its Washington correspondent, James Reston.

A State Department official said today that Messrs. Bevin, Schuman and Acheson were discussing the possibility of an early meeting in Paris. Mr. Reston said the Foreign Secretaries would meet there, probably next Thursday and Friday. He added that the meeting was proposed by Mr. Bevin, who originally suggested a conference on Germany, “but no policy has yet been devised that has ever prevented the three Foreign Ministers from freewheeling over much larger areas in the world whenever they get together.”

The question of recognising the Chinese Communists raises a number of complicated issues for the three Foreign Secretaries. The British Government was under pressure from the extreme left for idealogical reasons) from the extreme right (for commercial reasons), and from Austhe extreme left (for ideological reasons) to recognise the Chinese Communists as the legitimate Government.

The United States would, however, rather not take such action at this time, mainly because Chinese Communists have not yet met tests for recogntion, and because there are powerful forces in the United States supporting Chinese Nationalists. Offisials in Washington saw little chance of the three Foreign Secretaries being able to agree about China. “If the three Governments cannot agree on when to recognise the Communist Government this will make their deliberations on proceeding with the Japanese treaty all the more difficult, for China must be in on any Japanese peace treaty conference, and until everyoody recognises the same Government in China a conference on the peace treaty will probably have to be postponed,” says Mr. Reston.

Questions connected with the organisation of the North Atlantic Pact were also expected to be considered, and “an informed guess” at the state Department was that the following questions on Germany would be discussed:—

(1) Developments since the formation of the West German Federal Republic and. the Communist-dominated East German Republic. (2) The West German Government’s proposed entrance into the Council of Europe, International Wheat Agreement, and International Bank for Reconstruction and the International Monetary Fund (together with tactics for keeping the East German Democratic Republic out of these and other international agencies).

(3) The West German Government’s desire to end dismantling of German factories and the Western Allies’ desire to see West Germans accept rights and responsibilities offered them under the terms of the International Authority for the Ruhr. (4) Germany’s export competition with Western countries.