URANIUM DEPOSITS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 89, 3 February 1947, Page 5

URANIUM DEPOSITS

BELGIAN CONGO ALLEGED DEAL The uranium deposits in the Belgian Congo, 900,000 square mile territory in the heart of Africa, have suddenly become front-page news. Brussels is seething with various rumours about an alleged uranium deal concluded during the war between the United States and Belgium. Under it Belgium is supposed to have ceded the whole output of uranium in the Congo to the United States.

It is said that only three or four people in Belgium, including the Foreign Minister, M. Spaak, know the actual details of the arrangement by which the Americans have acquired a virtual monopoly on the term of the agreement. What is certain is that even Belgian scientists are not allowed to travel to the colonies, and that Belgian scientific institutions have not been able to get an ounce of uranium from the Congo since the war, although the Congo’s uranium deposits are estimated by some authorties at 70 per cent, of the known world resources.

“Iron Curtain”

The matter has now been taken up by the Belgian Royalists, some of whose spokesmen have been asking what is happening to the Congo uranium. A Royalist paper the other day asserted that even Belgian Parliajnentary commissions have been denied entry into the Congo and demanded a public Parliamentary inquiry into what is called the “iron curtain” between the Motherland and the Colonies.

The issue had previously been raised by the Communists, but some Royalists now seem determined to steal their atomic thunder and turn it on the Government. The Rightwing opposition, however, is divided on the question. One section of it is loath to use the atomic argument as a means of hastening the King’s return, because it is afraid that by so doing it may expose itself to the accusation of playing the Russian game.

Another section of the Royalists would sacrifice considerations of foreign policy to its Royalist zeal; and it threatens to stage a modern Belgian version of the Panama scandal, a scandal which may have repercussions far beyond the frontiers of Belgium.