West Europe Is Outvoted at The Danube Conference

Grey River Argus, 11 August 1948, Page 3

West Europe Is Outvoted at The Danube Conference

. BELGRADE, August 9. The Danube Conference has given the British. French and American delegations 24 hours to make amendments to the Soviet-sponsored draft pact, which would place the Danube under the exclusive control of the Eastern European States. Britain has tabled an amendment, demanding the inclusion of herself, France and the United States, as well as the Danube States, in the New Danube Commission, and the immediate inclusion of Austria. The United States delegation intends to introduce a series of amendments generally, calling for the creation of an 11-nation international regime, with broad powers to ensure free navigation on the Danube. The Italian Foreign Minister, Count Sforza, sent a Note to the conference affirming Italy’s right to participate. The countries taking part are the six Danubian States, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Roumania, Ukraine, Russia —all Communist States—and the three Western Powers, Britain, U.S.A, and France. Austria attends in an advisory capacity.

The conference rejected by seven votes to three British resolutions that the dispute over the validity of the 1921 Danube Convention should be submitted to the International Court of Justice at The Hague, and that an international tribunal be appointed to decide what international agreements |in Danube navJlgaOpn are now in force. The Russian and other Eastern delegates maintain that the 1921 convention is invalid on the ground that later agreements have nullified it. The 1921 Statute of the Danube is regarded by the Western Powers as remaining in force. The vJfew widely held is that the statute can only be replaced by a new instrument if all the signatories agree, but Russia —not herself a signatory—does not hold this view. The two branches of the Danube Commission—the International Danube Commission above Braila, 90 miles from the mouth of the Danube, and the European Commission below Braila—are still in legal existence. The former was arbitrarily suppressed by Hitler in November 1939, and, according to Article 7 of the Danube Statute, the powers of the latter can cease only by international arrangement by all the Commission States. But Russia has not yet allowed the revival of either the International Danube Commission or the European Danube Commission. Before the Second- World War there was an extensive Danubian interchange—eastern raw materials for the west, and western industrial goods for the east. The resumption of this traffic—7,soo,ooo tons in 1936 —is important to the success of the European Recovery Programme.