TROOP MOVES IN GERMANY

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

TROOP MOVES IN GERMANY

U.S. REPORT “ BASED ON RUMOURS” LONDON, June 17. A report published in the United States that American troops might have been placed on the alert in Germany because of reported concentrations of Russian and other troops in south-eastern Germany was based on rumours, said an official spokesman of the American delegation to the Foreign Ministers’ Conference in Paris, quoted by the Associated Press. The spokesman added: "There are all kinds of rumours flying around here. That particular one is of a type that I do not (vant to comment on/’ The spokesman said that as far as he knew there was nothing to support the story that Italian dissidents were planning to scuttle their fleet rather than hand* it over as reparations. In Frankfurt. Lieutenant-Colonel Norman Sprowl, of United States Army Public Relations, declared that American troop movements at present were occurring only for redeployment. Referring to widespread reports of

strategic shifts of American units, particularly paratroops, because of rumoured Red Army concentrations, Lieutenant-Colonel Sprowl added: “Movements occur only on orders and the paratroops here are not at present on order*.”