PEACE TERMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 March 1941, Page 5

PEACE TERMS

SIGNING AT TOKIO TODAY REPORTED CONCESSIONS. COMMERCIAL & ECONOMIC RELATIONS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, March 8. A peace treaty settling the Indo-China-Thailand dispute will be signed provisionally tomorrow, according to a Tokio message. A Hanoi message, however, states that, despite reports to this effect, officials tonight maintained reserve, indicating a belief • that peace is not yet fully assured. (The peace settlement, the 8.8. C. stated this morning, will not be signed before today). An informed source in Tokio says that the French have probably saved virtually all the rich province of Cambodia by offering Thailand a corridor to the Chinese frontier in the north instead. The Japanese favoured the corridor for military reasons, therefore jiersuaded Thailand to accept it in place of the Cambodia rice districts, which Thailand coveted. It is reported that the French have agreed to give up a thin -strip in western Cambodia and sections in the Laos province, west of the Mekong River. The Saigon correspondent.of the Associated Press of America reports that authoritative quarters there said today that one of the principal points at stake in the negotiations was the proposed establishment of a new borderline through the ricn Cambodia province. This, they said, was far more important to the Indo-Chinese than the slice of Laos asked by the Thailanders, since the Laos area consisted mainly of unprospected and mountainous jungle. The Cambodia section, near the Thai border, which Thailand wanted, contains about 1,000,000 inhabitants, 300 of them French. The area contains rise corn, pepper and rubber plantations, valued at many hundreds of thousands of dollars, together with a sapphire mine near Palin.

The “Nichi Nichi Shimbun” predicted a transition in commercial and economic relations between Japan and Thailand. It believed that Japan was conducting economic negotiations with Thailand simultaneously with the trade talks between Japan and Indo-China.

The paper said that Thailand was at present struggling to promote “a racial principle aiming at economic stabilisation through the medium of the restoration of commercial rights to former Chinese merchants and the removal of monopolistic burdens in finance and tin-mining under the pressure of British capital. For the execution of these ■ activities Thailand cannot but depend upon Japan for support.” ‘•Nichi Nichi Shimbun” commenting on a Hanoi report that the United States • is freezing the Indo-China Bank’s funds said: “Japan cannot ignore such outrageous action aiming to restrain Indo-China in the last stage of the peace parley.” “Yomiuri Shimbun” ran a headline: “Evil .hand obstructing Japan-Indo-China co-operation.” Commenting on the Japanese outcry a Treasury official in Washington pointed out that French Indo-Chinese credits were frozen last June, together with all the funds of French colonies. The Thai Minister to Germany was received by Herr von Ribbentrop, thse German Foreign Minister, on Friday.