EXCHANGE PLAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 April 1942, Page 2

EXCHANGE PLAN

SICK & WOUNDED WAR PRISONERS OUTCOME OF NEGOTIATIONS WITH ITALY. HOSPITAL SHIPS GOING TO SMYRNA. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY. April 4. li is officially staled that negotiations which have been in progress through the medium of a protecting Power have made possible the repatriation of some sick and wounded Imperial prisoners of war from Italy and Italian prisoners from tlie Middle Bast. Smyrna has been selected for the port of exchange and the operation is due to begin shortly. The exchange will be made by the use of hospital ships. Under the Geneva Convention prisoners of war who have been examined by an independent medical commission and found seriously ill or seriously wounded are entitled to be repatriated. Certain categories of noncombatant personnel, known as protected personnel, are similarly .repatriated under the Red Cross convention. Italians will be far more numerous than Imperial prisoners. This follows inevitably from the fact that the British Empire holds far more prisoners than Italy. Both Britain and Italy accepted the principle that only those protected personnel on each side who could be spared from attending their own fellow prisoners should be. repatriated. Negotiations throughout proceeded upon the basis laid down in the con- , venticns that obligations to repatriatces are absolute and take no account of the relative numbers on either side. Independent medical commissions are continuing their work on each side and Britain intends to continue the process of repatriation by agreement with Italy on the same lines as has been followed in this operation.