PEACE TREATY WITH ITALY

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24899, 12 June 1946, Page 7

PEACE TREATY WITH ITALY

MINISTERS’ DEPUTIES ACHIEVE LITTLE

SOVIET REJECTS BRITISH PROPOSAL

LONDON, June 10. “The chief Soviet delegate at the meeting of the Foreign Ministers' deputies (Mr Gusev) turned down the British proposal that' a Four-Power Commission should fly to Libya to investigate on the spot the wishes of the inhabitants of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica about their future,” says Reuter’s correspondent in Paris. “Mr Gusev said: ‘lf such a. commission went to Tripolitania and Benghazi, it would be able to get only the views of officials, who would tell the commission that the Arabs wanted to remain under the colonial regime.’ “The deputies, with only four days before the Foreign Ministers again meet, have not much chance of doing anything more than producing for their chiefs a skeleton draft of a treaty with Italy, consisting largely of headings and subjects to be treated, with the texts of the vaxious delegations’ proposals attached. “Clauses for which agreed texts exist are B few and far between, and they do not cover what Mr Molotov called the three fundamental issues—colonies, reparations, and the future of Trieste.”