Poles in exile defy Big Three
But former premier may join cabinet
BULLETIN
LONDON, England (UP) – The London Polish government tonight flatly rejected the Big Three decision on Poland.
LONDON, England (UP) – The Polish Exile Cabinet was expected to defy the Allied Big Three today and reject its invitation to join the provisional government in liberated Poland.
The Exile Cabinet probably will make known its stand following a special meeting today, but its repeated anti-Russian declarations made rejection of the Crimean conference’s formula for Poland a foregone conclusion.
It was likely, however, that Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, who resigned as exile premier last November after failing to bring about a rapprochement with the Russians, would hasten to Poland to join a coalition government.
Unity demanded
President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill doomed the exile government by promising at Yalta to recognize the Soviet-supported Polish Provisional Government once it has been reorganized on a “broader democratic basis with inclusion of democratic leaders from Poland itself and from the Poles abroad.”
Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Churchill and Premier Stalin also gave their blessing to a coalition government already in the process of formation in Yugoslavia under an agreement negotiated by Marshal Tito and Premier Ivan Subasic of the Royal Yugoslav exile government.
Other Balkan question
The Big Three recognized the objections of King Peter to a one-party (Communist) Parliament, however, by recommending that the anti-Fascist assembly be extended to include members of the last pre-occupation Parliament who had not collaborated with the Nazis.
The Big Three also made a “general review of other Balkan questions,” presumably including the Greek crisis, which was already well on the way to solution following the signing of a peace treaty by the Greek Government and the rebellious left-wing EAM-ELAS at Athens yesterday.
The formula for Poland represented a compromise between the Soviet and Anglo-American positions, though Moscow asserted that the Soviets had won “hands down.”
The Crimean declaration said Soviet Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov, U.S. Ambassador W. Averell Harriman and British Ambassador Sir Archibald Clark Kerr would sit as a commission in Moscow with Polish leaders in reorganizing the provisional government, which would be known as the “Polish Provisional Government of National Unity.”
There was no question but what the Soviet views prevailed on the question of Poland’s eastern boundary. The Crimean declaration said the United States, Britain and Russia were agreed that the Curzon Line, which gives some 50,000 square miles of pre-war eastern Poland to Russia, should be adopted.
Poland would be recompensed by taking over German territory to the north and west, presumably including large portions of East Prussia, Silesia, Brandenburg and Pomerania, with the final boundaries being set at the Peace Conference.
By adoption of the Curzon Line as its western boundary, Russia would take over the former Polish cities of Lwow, Pinsk, Luck, Brest-Litovsk and Grodno, though Poland might retain the last two under the Crimean declaration’s provision for digressions in some regions of three to five miles “in favor of Poland.”
WASHINGTON (UP) – Allied abandonment of the London Polish exile government and acceptance of the Curzon Line as the eastern Polish boundary brought loud protests today from many Polish-American circles.
But the long-awaited decision appears to be final, with the Big Three ready to make it stick.
The London Polish government is not likely to find a court of appeal.
The key to the plan apparently is for Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, former premier of the London Poles, to join the Lublin government.