AMOUNT REDUCED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26629, 27 November 1947, Page 5

AMOUNT REDUCED

AMERICAN FOREIGN AID BASED ON GOODS AVAILABLE RECOMMENDATIONS BY HOUSE COMMITTEE Rec. 9 p.m. WASHINGTON, Nov. 25. The House Foreign Affairs Committee to-day voted to reduce the emergency foreign aid programme to 549,000.000 dollars and include help to China in that figure. The Administration had asked for 597,000,000 dollars to help France, Italy and Austria through the winter The committee slashed the amount of 'aid for those three countries to 489,000,000 dollars, then added 60,000,000 dollars for China. With this decision the committee finished its work on the stop-gnp measure except for the details. Mr George Marshall, when proposing the European aid programme to Congress, recommended 60,000.000 dollars for China before July 1, 1948, but it was to come after the emergency sum for Europe. Representative John Vorys (Republican, Ohio!. a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said tonight that the reduction in projected help to France, Italy and Austria was based on the committee’s information on the amount of goods that could be made available to them. The debate on the committee’s Bill probably will not start until the middle of next week—at least two days after the December 1 deadline which Mi Marshall set for Congressional ap proval of the stop-gap aid measure. The committee’s proposal that China should be included in the stop-gap measure is in flat opposition to Mr Marshall’s view that China’s need for emergency assistance is not comparable in urgency to the requirements of Europe.

Meanwhile the Senate completed its second day of the debate on the stopgap aid measure and the leaders of both parties expect an overwhelming vote of approval to-morrow. Both the Republicans and Democrats warned that the alternative to American help might be the Communist domination of Europe and possibly another world war.

The senior Democrat, Senator Tom Connally, said: “We must justify the confidence and trust of the war-torn world and nations of Western Europe. They must not be hurled back into the midnight darkness of a police State.” No organised opposition to the Bill appeared, but several senators criticised the Administration for permit-

ting shipments of American machinery to Soviet bloc countries. The Senate approved an amendment designed to make it clear that the passage of the Bill would not commit Congress to the long-range Marshall Plan. The chairman of the House Special Committee on Foreign Aid, representative Christian Herter, introduced a Bill to establish an independent Government corporation with a four-man board of directors representing both parties to administer the Marshall Plan. The agency would have an initial capital of 500.000,000 dollars.