LEAGUE COUNCIL

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 22, 27 January 1938, Page 9

LEAGUE COUNCIL

AGENDA APPROVED

ALEXANDRETTA DISPUTE

REPORTED SETTLED

. (Uuited Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) (Received January 27, 11.30 a.m.) ' GENEVA, January 26. The Council of '• the League of Nations at a short private meeting today approved the agenda for its hundredth session. » ' It is understood that one of the thorniest questions, namely the Alexandretta dispute, has been settled, as a result of direct negotiations between France and Turkey.

The French High Commissioner, M. Roger Garreau, recently read a proclamation before local dignitaries of .the Sanjak (State) of Alexandretta announcing the inauguration of an autonomous^. Government for that region. . . ( . .

M. Garreau informed the officials that action was being taken under the decision of the League of Nations in May to make the territory self-govern-ing. ■ / ■ ■ .

The Sanjak is composed of the districts of Antioch, Alexandretta, and Kirikhan in north-western Syria, bordering Turkey. The Sanjak is one of the five "States" that compose Syria, which France governs under mandate from the League. *

The High Commissioner said that n committee named by the \League had begun work and would organise and control elections for the Parliament of the Sanjak of Alexandretta. Lebanon and the other three States of Syria were to become fully independent in 1939. The Syrian Legislature had opposed autonomy for Alexandretta; The Sanjak had been the scene of rioting between Arabs and Turks, the latter insisting that the Alexan-dretta-Antioch region was "technically purely Turkish." Turkey had sought the separation of the Sanjak from Syria. : , . Turks in the district are said to number 70,000; Arabs, composing most of the remainder of the 220,000 population.