Denmark And Norway May Join Defence Plan

Chronicle (Levin), 8 January 1949, Page 5

Denmark And Norway May Join Defence Plan

Received Friday, 8.30 p.m. LONDON, .Tan. 7. The two-day meeting at Karlstad between the Danish, Norwegian and Rwedish Prime Ministers and Defence Ministers to discuss joint Scandinavian defence was summoned at twelve hours ' notice on Tuesday afternoon on Norway 's initiative and, according to the Daily Telegraiih's Rtoc-kholm correspondent, it followed the arrival of a speciai courier by air from Washington with a secret report on inf'orrnal conversations to which the Norwegian and Danish Ambassadors ito the United States had been summoned by the Ameriean State Department last Monday. At these talks the correspondent says the two Ambassadors were told of the progress reached in Washington between the prospective signatories of the Atlantic Pact. and was unoffieiallv informed thai

if their Governments were interested .and willing a formal invitation for Danish and Norwegian partieipation. in the Pact would be issued. No similar approach was made to Sweden or to its Washington representative. Sweden, it is believed, wishes to maintain a position of complete neutrality, but Norway and Deitmark increasingly favour alignment with the Western Powers. The fact that a f'urther meeting is to be lield in Copen hagen is said to indieate that the Swedes wrant time to study their position before reaehing a decision. ' According to a Paris cable the Atlantic Pact, linkiug the United Rtates and Oanada in a military defence alliance with five Brussels Treaty Powers, will be signed by the end of January, say usually reliable diplomatie sources. They added that the draft of the pact deiines the 'Atlantic Seeurity Zone" as including Ieeland, Norway and Denmark, but it will remain for these countries to accept or rejeet the obligations' proposed in the Pact, whicli will need ratification by the Pariiaments of the States concerned. Responsible eircles pointed out that Ameriean and Canadian ratification wonld go far. to reassure other participants that the mutual defence obligations they nndertook by the Brussels Treaty had the praetical backing of the United States. The Pact will be one of the subjeets reviewed by Mr. Bevin and M. Schuman when they meet in London on January 13.