TERMS IN SYRIA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 July 1941, Page 5

TERMS IN SYRIA

ALLIED OCCUPATION IN PROGRESS REPATRIATION OF VICHY TROOPS. UNLESS THEY ELECT TO JOIN FREE FRENCH. LONDON, July 15. The military convention which brings to an end hostilities in Syria indicates the following terms: Allied forces will occupy Syria and Lebanon and the occupation of strategic points is to start today. Vichy forces are io be concentrated in certain areas until repatriated. Vichy troops will decide individually whether they wish to join the Allies or to be repatriated. Full honours of war are granted to Vichy forces. Guns, motor transport and petrol arc to be placed under British control and shipping, naval craft and aircraft handed over. British troops have begun to occupy strategic points and it is reported that Allied forces now occupy Beirut. Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Churchill said Britain did not seek any advantage in Syria. The only object in occupying the country was to beat Germany and help in winning the war. REMARKABLE CHANGE IN EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN. MR CHURCHILL'S SURVEY. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 9.45 a.m.) RUGBY, July 15. Speaking in the House of Commons of Syria, Mr Winston Churchill said a military convention, “putting an end to a period of fratricidal strife between Frenchmen and Frenchmen and also between Frenchmen and British, Australian and Indian soldiers, all of whom drew the sword of his own free will in the defence of France,” had been signed in a cordial spirit on both sides. The fact that such relations as existed with the Vichy Government had not been made worse during the campaign. when the forces on both sides had acquitted themselves with discipline, skill and gallantry, was proof of the deep apprehension by the people of France of the true issues at stake. “It is a manifestation of that same spirit which leads them to wave encouragement to our bombing aircraft although bombs in the hard fortune of war have to be cast upon French territory because it is in enemy hands,” said Mr Churchill. “We seek no British advantage in Syria. Our only object in occupying the country has been to beat the Germans and help win the war. We rejoice that, with the aid of General de Gaulle's forces, led by General Catroux and General le Gentilhomme, we have been able to bring the people of Syria and Lebanon a restoration of full, sovereign independence. We have liberated them from the thraldom exercised by the German Armistice Commission at Wiesbaden and from the dangerous German intrigues and infiltrations which were in progress. The historic interests of France in Syria and the primacy of those interests over the same interests of other European nations are preserved without prejudice to the rights of sovereignty of the Syrian races." In concluding his statement Mr Churchill said anyone who. a few months ago, when the British Minister at Bagdad was a prisoner in his own legation, and Syria and Iraq began to be overrun by German “tourists," had predicted that by the middle of July the whole of the Levant would be cleaned up and British authority reestablished there, would have been considered a most imprudent prophet. Mr Churchill added that the heavy, intensive fighting by our army at Solium and the stubborn defence in Crete, in which grievous losses were inflicted on enemy air power must be judged to have played their part in arriving at the general result.