CONFERENCES: Squeeze on Franco

Russians rated Francisco Franco’s political life expectancy at not more than six months. That, explained a Soviet spokes man, was why the Paris conference on Tangier ended last week with agreement to meet again next February — with Spain participating. Meanwhile, strategic Tan gier will revert to the international control prevailing before Franco’s Moorish troops seized it in 1940.

Big Three pressure on Franco began when Russia insisted on a place at the Tangier conference, but refused to sit down with representatives of Fascist Spain. Spain was excluded. Next came the Russian-initiated Big Three agreement at Potsdam barring Franco’s Government from the United Nations organization. After that:

¶ British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin said that the British would take “a favorable view” of a change in regime in Spain (but added that Britain would not promote another civil war).

¶ President Truman echoed Bevin, and plainly said that none of the Allies liked Franco or his Government.

¶Exiled Spanish Republicans, sensing opportunity, composed many of their differences and set up a government in Mexico City under suave, sophisticated Diego Martinez Barrio as President and mild-mannered José Girál y Pereira as Premier. The new government’s political complexion was a moderate pink, calculated to please Britain and the U.S.

Franco himself seemed to be seeking a way of placating Britain and the U.S. He hoped a restoration of Spanish monarchy might be enough. Meanwhile the Russians, by taking a leading part in the conference on Tangier, had (for the first time since the Revolution) achieved diplomatic recognition that Russia’s influence reached all the way to the Atlantic.