LOCARNO CONFERENCE

Evening Star, Issue 22445, 16 September 1936, Page 9

LOCARNO CONFERENCE

ITALY'S REPLY TO INVITATION Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, September 15. (Received September 16, at 10 a.m.) Signor Grandi has delivered Italy’s reply to the Locarno invitation. The message states that Italy considers that a diplomatic exchange of views is necessary before deciding the date of the conference. DATE NOT YET FIXED (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, September 15, (Received September 16, at noon.) Preliminary diplomatic preparations for the proposed meeting of the Locarno Powers, to which the Foreign Secretary, despite his recent enforced absence from the department, has been giving constant attention since his return from his holiday, are now making progress. The communique of July 23 favoured the opening of negotiations for a new agreement to fake the place of the Rhine Pact of Locarno as the first business in the programme for consolidation of peace_ by means of a general settlement achieved by the free co-operation of all the Powers concerned. The communique declared that steps should be taken to arrange for a five-Power meeting as soon as it could conveniently be held, and there was speculation at the time whether it would assemble before the opening of the League Assembly. Subsequently in the House of Commons Mr Eden emphasised the view of His Majesty’s Government that a great amount of preparatory work must be done through diplomatic channels before the meeting could usefully take place, and the German and other Governments, in accepting invitations to the meeting, also stressed the importance of careful diplomatic preparation. It was with the idea of allowing time for diplomatic exchanges that the British Government tentatively suggested the second week in October as the date for the conference, which it hoped would be generally suitable and which it had reason to think would be acceptable to the German Government. Since the preliminray exchanges are to be made through diplomatic channels, the League meetings in the next few weeks do not involve any interruption of the work, and the date therefore was thought to leave ample time for preparing the ground. There is a strong feeling in London that the prospective date is among the first essentials to fee agreed to by the participating Powers if the danger of drift, which would be most regrettable in the present state of Europe, is to be avoided. The proposal of His Majesty's Government for the meeting to take place before the end of October has been found agreeable by the French and Belgian Governments, and it is understood that these Governments would also favour London as the meeting place. The German Government, in what is regarded as an interim reply, expressed the opinion that a meeting in October would provide insufficient time for continuation of the preparatory discussions. The • Italian Government, whose reply was delivered by Signor Grandi to Sir Robert Vansittart, in thanking the British Government for the invitation, added that before fixing the actual date for the meeting it thought that diplomatic exchanges should continue. The date for the conference remains, therefore, a matter for further discussion.