DISAGREEMENTS IN PARIS

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24910, 25 June 1946, Page 5

DISAGREEMENTS IN PARIS

MINISTERS “AS FAR APART AS EVER” REPORTED DECISION TO FINISH THIS WEEK LONDON, June 23. “The Foreign Ministers’ Conference is determined to know by June 28 once and for all whether it can agree over the draft treaties and go on to summon the Peace Conference,” reported the Paris correspondent of “The Times” on Sunday. “The question is being widely asked whether the Ministers have reached this decision in exasperation or in hopes. The answer is largely to be found in the Minister’s secret meet-

ing on Friday evening and Mr Molotov’s dinner table talk with Mr Byrnes the same night. “The four Ministers had found themselves almost as far apart as ever over Trieste and the Julian March. They then, however, began to touch on the possibility of putting Trieste and the neighbourhood under an international regime. Mr Molotov clearly did not like the proposal, and Mr Bevin and Mr Barnes .maintained that Trieste, which is peopled mainly by Italians, should remain Italian.

“Mr Byrnes, at the dinner table talk, seems to have made it clear beyond doubt that the United States could not agree to the cession of Trieste to Jugoslavia. Mr Molqtov, apparently, stated equally firmly that it could not remain Italian.”

The correspondent added: “Some Americans say that no progress has been made at the Foreign Ministers’ meeting, but a Communist Paris newspaper significantly comments: ‘lt is probable that Mr Molotov is awaiting precise instructions from* Moscow.’ The newspaper, perhaps equally significantly, asks whether a compromise can be reache’d satisfying the Slav peoples’ demand that they should ‘at no price reurn under the Italian yoke’—a form of words which does not rule out an international regime.” Reuter said: “British delegation circles have denied reports published in Paris that at a secret meeting of the Foreign Ministers on June 21 M. Bidault put forward a proposal at Mr Bevin’s suggestion for the internationalisation of Trieste. British delegation circles emphasised that in the British view Britain had already made a gesture towards a compromise. on the Italian-Jugoslav frontier • Question by suggesting an agreement on . the French, as opposed to the British, proposed demarcation line. Consequently any further compromise proposals were unlikely to be made on the British initiative.”

The Russian Tass Agency’s correspondent in Paris says that the Paris newspapers are full of falsehood and fiction about the Foreign Ministers’ conference. The correspondent, as an example, cites a statement attributed to Reuter’s correspondent to the effect that a Russian spokesman said that the Russian delegation was readv to compromise on the Trieste and the ItalianJugoslav frontier questions rather than create a new deadlock. The Tass correspondent says* “This falsehood obviouslv corresponds with the desires of Reuter’s correspondent.”