French approve Big Three decisions
Will take part in Reich occupation
PARIS, France (UP) – French quarters expressed full agreement with nearly all phases of the Big Three declaration today and said France would accept invitations to participate in the occupation and control of post-war Germany.
France will also send a representative to the United Nations conference at San Francisco in response to the Big Three’s invitation, these sources said.
Bitter over exclusion
Satisfaction over the Crimean declaration was tempered, however, by bitterness over France’s exclusion from the conference though she is Germany’s principal neighbor in the west.
France was kept in the dark as to when and where the conference was being held and what was being discussed. The decisions were finally handed to French Foreign Minister George Bidault by the American, British and Soviet ambassadors last night as they were being announced.
De Gaulle vindication
The Big Three’s invitations to participate in the occupation of Germany and join the Allied control commission at Berlin were seen as vindication of Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s diplomacy.
Gen. de Gaulle twice recently had reaffirmed France’s right to occupy the Rhineland and Ruhr, possibly in connection with the U.S. and Britain at first but later alone. Occupation of a broad strip of the east bank of the Rhine was also seen as a possibility.