FRENCH MINISTER

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 21, 25 July 1945, Page 8

FRENCH MINISTER

N.Z. APPOINTMENT

The Provisional Government of France has decided to establish a Legation in New Zealand, and Mr. Felix Alexis Armand Gazel has been appointed its first Envoy Extraordinary and. Minister Plenipotentiary of France in New Zealand. The Minister of External Affairs (Mr. Fraser), who made the announcement last night, said that for practical reasons the New Zealand Government was not able at present to accept the invitation of the French Provisional Government to establish a New Zealand Legation in Paris.

"The New Zealand Government," said Mr. Fraser, "welcomes the action of the French Government in opening up diplomatic relations with New Zealand, in view of the community of interests which bring the two countries together in the Pacific, and in token of the brotherhood in arms which has united French and New Zealand troops on the field of battle in Libya and in Tunisia. I am confident that the strengthening of the already close relations between France and New Zealand will contribute to that general growth -of international security and that spirit of mutual confidence which it is New Zealand's policy, as a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations and in her own place, to promote."

In the meantime, he said,, arrangements would be continued for his Britannic Majesty's Embassy in Paris to act for New Zealand in France for the transmission of communications from the Government of New Zealand.