JUGOSLAV DEMAND

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24913, 28 June 1946, Page 7

JUGOSLAV DEMAND

“Full Sovereignty Over Trieste” CZECH SUPPORT FOR CLAIM (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11 P- in ) BELGRADE, June 27. Marshal Broz, in a statement broadcast by the Belgrade radio said that only full Jugoslav sovereignty over Trieste would satisfy him. He would not consent to half measures, and he regretted the Allies’ lack of understanding of the Jugoslav case. Referring to the recent statement by the Italian Premier (Signor de Gasperi) that Italy would resist the internationalisation of Trieste and concessions to Jugoslavia, Marshal Broz said that an aggressive defeated Power had no right to make such a statement. It would not have dared to make it but for the active support some of the Allies had given Italy. The Czechoslovak Government has sent a memorandum to the Foreign Ministers in Paris opposing the internationalisation of Trieste and recommending that Trieste should become Jugoslav territory “in the interests of economic prosperity and appeasement.” The memorandum added that the Czech Foreign Minister (Mr Jan Masaryk), with his Under-Secretarv of State, had arrived in Paris. Their journey was not official, but they would probably confer with the Foreign Ministers.

Reuter’s Rome correspondent says that the National Committee of Liberation and the trade unions in Pola have called a general strike to protest against the reported proposal of the Foreign Ministers to cede Istria to Jugoslavia.

•■Marshal Broz's Government will never sign a peace treaty with Italy which dies not accept the Jugoslav solution for Trieste," said a Jugoslav spokesman quoted by the Pans correspondent of the Associated Press. He added that the “solution’ presented to the Foreign Ministers was the creation ol a “Seventh Jugoslav Republic’ for said that the French compromise proposal for internationalisation for 10 years was not acceptable to Jugoslavia. Trieste is the bridgehead to the Balkans. History shows’that any Italian excursion into the Balkans is doomed to failure. In their own interests Italians should not oppose our proposals,” he said. The new President of the Italian Constituent Assembly, Signor Giuseppe Saragat, defining his idea of an honourable peace, said it would be fair to divide Venezia Giulia at the ethnic line—the Wilson line—giving Italy Trieste and the western Istrian cities, and leaving her also the African colonies which she had before the Fascist conquest and which she had administered ably. A Paris report says it is assumed that the Foreign Ministers will make one more effort to solve the question of Trieste which, a correspondent comments, can make or break the conference.