COLOMBIA REVOLTERS BEING DISARMED

Grey River Argus, 15 April 1948, Page 5

COLOMBIA REVOLTERS BEING DISARMED

BOGOTA, April 13.

The last group of Bogotan police, numbering 600, surrendered this morning to troops who roared up to their barracks in armoured cars. The police did not resist. They handed over the petrol and dynamite which they had been using as weapons for four days.

The Government’s announced censorsh.p on press messages had been lifted. Bogota food markets, some coffee houses and unwvecked shops have reopened. The Government radio announced three times on Monday that Colombia had broken relations with/ the Soviet, but to-day a member of the Presidential Secretariat said the decree had not yet been approved by the Cabinet.

The delegates to the Pan-Ameri-can Conference announced they will be sitting to-morrow, which is PanAmerican Day, to honour the South American liberator, Simon Bolivar. The chief delegates are meeting to-day to hear a report from a special committee named to decide whether conditions at Bogota would permit continuation of the sessions. It was announced that the conference would continue.

Did Bogota Communists Exchange Volleys

with U.S. Soldiers ?

(Rec. 10.50) NEW YORK, April 13. Senatoi- Alberto Durand, a member of the Argentine Senate to-day returned to Buenos Aires from Bogota where he attended the PanAmerican conference. He said that at the Colombian capital American soldiers had guarded refugees from the Bogotan mobs. The Americans exchanged shots with the rioters. At the height of the revolution Senator Durand sadi he had left Bogota in a truck which was guarded by American soldiers, who were ;;rmed with machine-guns, and the truck was followed by another truck carrying American troops. He remarked: “Before we reached the airport, we had to throw ourselves on the truck floor while American soldiers exchanged volleys with Communists, who attacked iis from a car.”

WASHINGTON, April 13. State Department officials said they had no information that any American combat troops were in Bogota. There were American officers assigned to the Embassy and there was a military mission. They said it was impossible to believe that any American militarv men would have fired shots during the' revolution.

Communist Plan for Risings in South America PRECAUTIONS BY CHILE SANTIAGO (Chile), April 13. A statement issued from the office of President Videla said that the uprising in Colombia was part of a Communist master plan calling for similar outbreaks in Chile and Bolivia. The statement said the plot known as the “Autumn Flan.” was laid down last October at Belgrade. The President summoned high army and police officials to a meeting to adopt defence measures against an alleged Communist plot for a May Day coud in Chile, details of which are said to have been learned from documents found on Communists arrested in Santiago recently.