A REPORT ON GREECE
Stn,—Being one of the few people in this country to have read the Balkan Commission's Report, I am horrified at the way in which the -Press is suggesting that the whole Commission, except for Russians and Poles, has found Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia guilty of aiding the Greek guerrillas. In fact, six out of eleven States give unqualified support to the view that though Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria " repeatedly denied " the Greek charges, " and attacked the credibility of the witnesses who testified in their support, little direct evidence was brought forward to disprove them." Two States, Belgium and Colombo, said it was not for the Commission " to give any decision as to the possible responsi- bility " of the accused States ; France said the conditions of the enquiry " were not probably such as to allow us to draw from it any conclusions based on sound juridical principles," and Poland and U.S.S.R. washed their hands of the majority report altogether.
When I turned to the Commission's examination of the first batch of evidence, the Greek testimony that Albania was aiding the guerrillas, I found the following: Greece presented fourteen-witnesses. The Albanian representative was able to show important contradictions in the evidence of each of ten of these witnesses, in two cases the witness telling the Commission that his first deposition was untrue, being forced out of him by the Greek authorities. Two of the Greek witnesses were denounced as criminals, one being denounced by his own two brothers and the other being sought by the Albanian police for a bank robbery. A third was stated to have fought in a band of war criminals. It is quite clear that any court of law anywhere, confronted by such a collapse of so many witnesses, would never regard them as having proved their case. But six States did accept their evidence, while five refused to find the accused States guilty. It is a pity that the Press should now be presenting a picture to the British people of Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia having been found guilty by a U.N. Commission. The real facts of the enquiry throw a very different light on the present Security Council debates.— Yours, &c., PAT SLOAN. Yew Tree Cottage, Melody Road, Biggin Hill, Kent.
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