ARMENIAN BORDER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 October 1939, Page 5

ARMENIAN BORDER

GUARDED IN STRONG FORCE BY TURKS THE DISPUTE WITH RUSSIA. MOSLEM STATES CONFERRING. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. LONDON, October 26. The “Daily Mail’s" Istanbul correspondent says Turkey is reported to have concentrated 300.000 picked troops around the towns of Kars and Ardahan on the Armenian border. A Soviet Embassy official said that the Armenian, border dispute can be settled by negotiation. The Russian minority there is well treated and the matter therefore is not cause for breaking the friendship between Turkey and Russia. The Rome correspondent of the British Association Press says it is reported that representatives of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan are conferring at Istanbul. They are co-signatories of the Saadabad Pact, which was designed to prevent Soviet expansion to the Dardanelles and Persian Gulf. The Ankara correspondent, of the “Daily Mail" stated recently that Armenia, acting on instructions from Russia, had'c-lainied the return of Turkey's easternmost province, centred around the towns of Kars and Ardahan, which were Armenian until 1920. The population of the towns is Russianspeaking. This indicated that Russia, having failed to impose terms on Turkey for south-eastern expansion, was now directing her ambitions from a different point, the correspondent said. Russia wanted a warm seaport in the Persian Gulf. Several messages in the past few weeks have reported that Russia is reinforcing her frontier troops in the Caucasus.