Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946, Paris Peace Conference: Proceedings, Volume III

CFM Files

United States Delegation Journal

October 8, 1946, 9:30 a.m.

USDel (PC) (Journal) 65

The Conference continued consideration of the Italian Treaty. M. Molotov was in the Chair. The first speaker was M. Spaak on behalf of the Belgian Delegation. He said that the essential interests of Belgium were not at stake and thus his Delegation had been able to bring an attitude of objectivity to the Conference. He disapproved of the procedure which committed the four sponsoring powers to the articles of their draft treaties and which in most instances had amounted to foregone decisions. He added that he would ask for a different procedure for the German treaty. Spaak asked for more favorable consideration from the Conference of the joint Belgian-Netherlands amendment, on the Italo-Austrian agreement regarding the South Tyrol,¹² than it had received in the Italian Political Commission with regard to the treaty as a whole, he felt it was too hard. He warned against the mistakes of the last post-war period with respect to the young Weimar Republic in Germany and appealed to the Conference to help the young Italian Republic. A living healthy Italy, he concluded, was more important to Europe than a few million dollars in reparations.

The first delegate of Poland, M. Rzymowski, said that the Peace Treaty should make amends to Yugoslavia not only for the injustices of the Treaty of Rapallo¹³ but also for her sacrifices during the war. The Conference or the CFM must correct the injustices of the French line, he said. Furthermore, there must be modification in the French proposal for a Statute for the Free Territory which, in its present form, he warned, would cause endless debate in the CFM and subsequent difficulties in UNO.¹⁴ He plead for reparations for Albania. He said that the Polish and Ukrainian Delegations would ask the Conference to reconsider and approve their joint amendment (see page 34(b) of CP Plen. Doc. 24)¹⁵ regarding defascistization in Italy. He concluded by saying that the forces in the world fighting for peace could count upon the sincere cooperation of Poland.

M. Tsaldaris asked the Conference to reject the Yugoslav amendment to Article 21 of the Treaty [C.P.(Gen.)Doc. 1.U.12]¹⁶ which would require Italy to respect the “territorial integrity” of Albania and which had been adopted in the Commission by a majority of only one vote. He read out the minority report of the Commission on this amendment in which the US had associated itself (page 20 of CP Plen. Doc. 24) and referred to Greek aspirations in northern Epirus. He likewise asked the Conference not to approve Article 22 of the draft treaty providing for the transfer of the island of Saseno to Albanian sovereignty but rather to leave this question open for final decision in the CFM. He deplored the action of the Economic Commission in allotting Greece only $100,000,000 in Italian reparations and asked that Article 64(B) be reexamined by the CFM with respect to Greece.

12. For text of the amendment as proposed in C.P.(IT/P) Doc. 44 Revised, see footnote 66, p. 501.
13. The treaty between Italy and Yugoslavia relative to territories, frontiers, etc., signed November 12, 1920; for text, see League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. xviii, p. 388.
14. Comparative texts of the various draft Statutes for the Free Territory of Trieste are printed in C.P.(IT/P) (S/T) Doc. 8. Annex, vol. iv, p. 623.
15. For C.P.(Plen) Doc. 24, Report of the Political and Territorial Commission for Italy, see ibid., p. 299.
16. Amendments contained in C.P.(Gen) Doc. 1 are printed in ibid., pp. 654 ff.