Washington Thinks Proposal Will Not Be Accepted

Wanganui Chronicle, 6 November 1950, Page 5

Washington Thinks Proposal Will Not Be Accepted

In Washington a State Department spokesman said an agreement on the Austrian treaty would have to precede any other discussions with the Russians. He pointed out that Austria was the last subject of business before the last Council of Foreign Ministers' meeting in the summer ol 1949 in Paris. He said the United States “met the Russians on every point, but they kept putting new obstacles in the way of an agreement.” The Associated Press Washington correspondent says there is little indication in Washington that the’Soviet suggestion for a conference on the Prague plan will be accepted. Reaction to the Soviet move in diplomatic circles in London is that it is hypocritical in that the Russians who hava violated the demilitarisation clauses of the Potsdam Treaty under the guise of the People's Police Force they have created in the Soviet zone, have a large German army under former Wehrmacht officers, which is •rmed with heavy weapons, including tanks and artillery,. Both the Prague conference and the present Soviet move indicate that Russia was impressed by the determination and speed with which the Atlantic Powers are pressing ahead with plans for the

creation of a defence army of the West Western observers in Berlin regard Moscow's proposed Four-Power meeting as an open admission of the East German Communists' failure to make headway among the West Germans. . An Allied official suggested there was a direct link between the North Korean offensive and the timing of what he called the latest Soviet “peace offensive" in Europe. The price for non-intervention of heavy Chinese Communist forces in North Korea might be the Four Power meeting on Germany, he suggested Meanwhile Russia had launched a German peace congress in Berlin and clandestine petitions in West Germany today in a new effort to mobilise the German people for the unification of their country on Communist terms. Communists, including official guests from Russia, Poland and Czechoslovakia, attended the first session of the peace congress in theatre this morning. The Soviet Control Commission newspaper “Taegliche Rundschau" disclosed that petitions are now being circulated by Communists in West German factories to sign up workers In support of an all-Ger-many Council.