HOPES FOR EUROPE'S RECOVERY

Chronicle (Levin), 16 March 1948, Page 5

HOPES FOR EUROPE'S RECOVERY

Press Association)

MR. BEVIN OPENS 16-NATION CONFERENCE ON MARSHALL PLAN

(Per

Received Tuesday, 10,40 a.m. LONDON, March 15. The British Foreign Secretary, Mr.. Hirnest Bevm, opened the conference in Paris this afternoon of the 16 nations who will receive United States and under the Marshall Plan. Mr, Bevin said Britain was willing to participate in the permanent machinery for European economic co-operation. The traditional Iriendship between the United Kingdom and the other British Commonwealth countries would be maintained, however. The British Government could not see any grounds for conflict in the field.

Mr. Bevin said that two wars had meant for Europe nearly 30 years of struggle interwoven with economic disorder. They would not have been doing their duty if they ' had refused to give a constructive answer to the United States offer of aid. While Marshall aid had been the subject of long- investigation and protracted debate in the United States, the 16 European nations attending the conference had been striving to lay the foundations of recovery. They had had- many handicaps and difflculties to surmount, but he was more hopeful now than at any time during or since wai*. "The progress report to the conference emphasises that we cannot prevent a deterioration of our eccnomics unless we obtain in the near future food and raw materials from dollar areas," continued Mr. Bevin. The conference would establish what _ he called "the continuing organisation." This organisation would seek: Firstly, to build up European production and exports.

Secondly, to reduce the dollar deficit. Thirdly, to reduce European trade tarriers and suggest improvj ed clearing arrangements within i Europe. I Fourthly, to p'romote European ' economic and social well-being. | Mr. Bevin said that Britain. and j France would propose that the I three Western German zones 'should be associated with the plan. (He added that if Germany was •associated with the plan, Germany's products and markets would help a European recovery. The French Foreign Minister, M. Georges Bidault, addressing the conference, said that Europe for the time being was reduced to 16 countries, but he again ihvited Eastern Europe to collaborate in ' European reconstruction. He said that Germany must take her place in the unjverse to be rebuilt, but at •present she must be represented at the conference by deiegates of the Allied occupation commanders. "The resources of this industrious , and persevering -nation should be associated with the reconstruction we have undertaken."