PEACE TERMS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1548, 18 September 1912, Page 7

PEACE TERMS.

TURCO-ITALIAN WAR

A BASIS OF SETTLEMENT

DRAWN UP,

ITALIAN CONCESSIONS.

By Teleei'aph-Fress'Assoclation-Oepjrirtt (Rec. September 17, 11.30 p.m.)

London, September 17. Reports from Vienna aud Paris deny that the peace pourparlers have been broken oil", but slate Hint they arc still progressing. The seven proposed articles include the following provisions:— Turkey is to accept as an accomplished fact-provided that Italy exacts no formal recognition-the annexation of Tripoli. Turkey is to agree to withdraw her troops, but asks to retain one port in order to communicate with the Arabs in tho hinterland whom she. cannot abandon without fear of an uprising in the Mussulman world. \

The Sultan is to Tetain the spiritual bond over the Mussulmans.

Italy is to pay tribute to the Arabian Sheikhs for religious and philanthropic purpose?. Italy is to cede a point in the Rod Sea as compensation for the loss of Tripoli. Italy is to pay an annuity on the Libyan debt. The Italian Government has approved a suggestion to lend Turkey ,£20,000,000 to enable her to reorganise her finances and administration.

AMATEUR NEGOTIATORS. Nothing is known here (wrote the "Daily Telegraph's" Paris correspondent on August 8) of anv peaoe negotiations at Zurich between mysterious Turkish and Italian diplomatics. Perhaps the "Cologne Gazette," which spread the report, has revived and amplified a pieco of news several days old. Some time ago, not at Zurich, tut in a small, Swiss town on the Lake of Geneva, two amateur diplomatists, Said Holin, President of the Turkish State Council, and Commendatore Vespri, a director of the important Banca di Roma, which has been much involved in the affairs of the Tripoli expedition, were conferring together on their own authority with a view to laying foundations for official peace negotiations. They held no mandates whatever from their respective Governments, but were said to report at intervals privately to the Foreign Offices in Rome and Constantinople. It is quite possible, added the correspondent, that peace may ulimately arise out of some such private conversations, but I can find no indications at present, either that such a thing as official peace negotiations are yet being thought, of, or even that the two amateur diplomatists mentioned aro making any headway with their own private conferences, supposing they be still carrying them on. In point of fact, the latest telegrams from Constantinople sny that the present Ottoman Government is as determined ns its predecessors not to talk of peace on any terms which Italy offers. •