TREATY WITH ITALY

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24905, 19 June 1946, Page 7

TREATY WITH ITALY

Agreement Reached On Some Clauses ECONOMIC TERMS; SIZE OF ARMED FORCES

(Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, June 17. “Prospects seem good, but it is the last inch that counts,” says the Paris correspondent of “The Times,” commenting on the progress towards agreement at the Foreign Ministers’ conference on the peace treaty for Italy. “It must be remembered that many of these economic clauses (on several of which the Ministers have now agreed) cannot be finally drafted without reference to the wider disagreement among the Ministers on how Italy should be treated. “Similarly, any discussion on what should be done with Italian property, for example, in the Julian March (the ItalianJugoslav border zone) tends to be highly abstract and indecisive in the absence of political decision on the future of the territory.

“However, there are already a good many clauses in the Italian treaty on which the Ministers are agreed. There is complete accord on the size of the armed forces the Italians shall keep. If the treaty goes through Italy will be restricted to fewer than 300,000 troops all told, but will also have a Navy and an Air Force of more than 20,000 men apiece, including all the men needed on the land for servicing and maintenance.

“Italy will not be allowed any powerful aggressive weapons. Her tanks, which will not be the latest type, will number about 200 and her aeroplanes 350. Her Navy will be small but well balanced, with a large number of torpedo-boats, corvettes and auxiliary vessels to compensate for the severely restricted number of battleships and cruisers.

“Agreement has also been reached on the demilitarisation of the French-Italian and Italian-Jugoslav frontiers, and the Sicilian and Sardinian coastal regions.”