SPAIN EXCLUDED FROM MARSHALL PLAN

Grey River Argus, 3 April 1948, Page 5

SPAIN EXCLUDED FROM MARSHALL PLAN

WASHINGTON, April 1.

The Senate and House Committees working out a compromise on their differences over the Foreign Aid Bill, passed by both, agreed to-day to eliminate Spain from the nations eligible for aid. The conference acted within an hour of a White House announcement that President Truman was utterly opposed to the House including Snain in the European recovery programme. Earlier to*day the House of Representatives, by 168 to 140 votes, rejected a Democrat! effort to prevent the inclusion of Spain in the Marshall Plan.

The earlier decision of the House of Representatives to include Spain among the nations eligible for aid was strongly criticised both by ine New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune. The New York Times calls it “a grave blunder which has already done incalculable harm to the purposes of the European recovery programme and may vitiatte them entirey unless the blunder is corrected with the Senate” ,

The New York Herald Tribune said: ’‘When the House irresponsibly wrote Franco Spain into the European recovery programme it was not necessarily wrong, but it was being stupid. One hopes that the confer ence between the House and .the Senate will strike the passage from the final bill.”