REPARATIONS MUST BE SPEEDED UP

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5324, 10 February 1947, Page 5

REPARATIONS MUST BE SPEEDED UP

(Press Assn —

CLAIMS OF UKRA'INE INTER-ALLIED AGENCY DISSATISFIED /

-Rec. 9.30 p.m.)

LONDON, Feb. 9. Ukraine's statement to the Foreign Ministers' deputies assesses the cost of the German .occupation at more than £11,000,000,000 and demands repaymeiit "to the greatest possible extent" by the remova' of German industrial equipment, including equipment from the western occupation zones. The Ukra4jiian delegate, Mr. I. S. Senin, said that reparations "so far reeeived were "not worth mentioning." The statement propcses that German industry should be liquidatcd except for the amount required to supply the basic necessities and export needs and that this should be under four-Power control. The first action to lmplement the proposed four-Power co-ntrol should be taken in the Ruhr. Germany should be a single democratic State with self-gover"ning States headed by a central Government to be elected by the people.

Complete denazification and dqmocratisation must precede the creation of this State. The allies must eradicate the social basis of German militarism — -"Prussian junlcerism and the magnates of German monopolistic capitalism." The Ukralne demands that any citizens of allied or associated Powers, who collaborated with Germany and are still in Germany, should be returned » t'o their States "for the execution of justice." The deputies should recommend • tue dissolution of .camps of refugees and displaced persons in Germany and. there should be a permanent direction forbidding the organisation in Germany of groups of persons of Ukxgjnian origin directing activity against the Ukraine. The amount of German equipment whieh the Allied Control Commission has so far released for distribution a° reparations is unsatisfactory, says Ihe Secretary-General of the InterAllied Reparations Agencv, Mr Nigel Sutton. In 1946, the report of-the secre-tary-general states, many of the Allied nation."?, especially those physically damaged in the war, were urgently in need of industrial equipment. They were unable to get it from normal channels because of world shortajges. They must, therelore, rely on German reparations. The Allied authorities in Germany must sharply increase the rate of release of German assets if the reparations time-table envisaged at Potsdam was not to be grossly exceeded. The report reveals that German assets distributed in 1946 w&re as follows : — (1) 686,000 tons of merehant shipping. (2) 75,000 machines from plants in the American zone. (3) Machine tools worth £2,500,000 sterling, 80 per cent of whieh were taken from the British zone and the remainder from the Freneh zone.