Trieste Diplomacy
In the Trieste affair, some things have recently changed but most things have stayed the same. There is still no more than an even chance that Italy and Yugoslavia will agree to discuss the situation that arose out of the declaration of October 8th• giving Zone A to Italy. On the credit side, Signor Pella is no longer insisting that the declaration should be honoured. in full before he discusses anything. For the Italian Prime Minister has accepted, without conditions, an invitation to a five-power conference. Also on the credit side, Marshal Tito has renounced his original statement that Yugoslavia was prepared to go to war over Trieste; the Marshal has stated that he has no claim on the city itself. But on the debit side, the Yugoslays have not accepted the Western invitation to a conference. They persist in saying they cannot accept any invitation that takes the declaration of October 8th as its point of departure; they have repeated their claims to the Yugoslav villages in Zone A; and they have said they are not prepared to concede any Italian villages in Zone B to Italy. In other words, both Yugoslavia and Italy still claim the hinterland of Zone A, and neither side is yet prepared to come to a conference if that means admitting, in advance, that there may be an alternative solution. Thus, so long as both sides are forced, or force themselves, to take up public attitudes, those attitudes must remain irreconcilable—though slightly less irreconcilable than they were on October 9th.
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