Editorial Note
In a note of September 12 (transmitted to the Department of State in telegram 1237, September 13, and in despatch 489, September 14, both from Brussels, neither printed), Belgian Foreign Minister Paul [Page 214] van Zeeland pledged his government’s cooperation with the joint American-British civil aviation policy toward the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Van Zeeland indicated that Belgium would limit its aviation relations with the Soviet Union and its satellites to strict and effective reciprocity and would reserve the conventional arrangements which currently bound it. Belgium would continue adherence to this policy so long as it remained the basis for American-British aviation relations with Eastern Europe and provided it was adopted by Western European countries neighboring Belgium (711.4027/9–1349 and 9–1449).