RELATIONS WITH AXIS

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24901, 14 June 1946, Page 7

RELATIONS WITH AXIS

TRIAL OF GENERAL MIKHAILOVIC ALLIED OFFICERS AS WITNESSES (Rec. 11 p.m.) BELGRADE, June 12. General Mikhailovic intends to request permission to call as witnesses British and American officers who were attached to him as liaison officers during the war. They will probably be Colonel Bailey and Captain Hudson, of the British Army and Colonel Robert McDowell, of the United States Army. Under further- cross-examination this morning General Mikhailovic described his relations with the Germans in 1943 as not co-operation but a “haphazard, mutual battle.” He shifted the blame for the Chetniks’ co-opera-tion with the Axis troops on to subordinate commanders. He was the supreme commander, but at the time he had no knowledge of co-operation. General Mikhailovic said that Colonel Bailey and the British mission knew about Axis operations against the Partisans in 1943, and they kept the emigre Government informed. Aeroplanes came to the British mission with supplies of money for the Chetniks, and the 8.8. C. broadcast propaganda concerning the offensive. This afternoon General Mikhailovic asked for a secret session for what he had to say. The president refused, eying: "Speak out here.’* General Mikhailovic then said that Colonel Bailey, m December. 1942, “told me to annihilate the Partisans.” Colonel Bailey said at another talk that he *anted everything clear for the proposed Allied landings in the spring of "Colonel Bailey told us things in bits and pieces,” added General Miknailovic. “He did not always tell us everything.” General Mikhailovic said that two British officers knew of his collaboration with the Germans and did not condemn it. The British Foreign Office has categorically denied a report that British wncers parachuted into Jugoslavia to contact the resistance forces, were infracted to ask for anti-Communist tftion as a condition of British aid in the country. The instructions in all cases were confined solely the prosecution of'the war against Germany. Provided the resistance leaders were prepared to fight * the common enemy, no other considera-