the chairmanship of the foreign minister of Italy. These meetings were preceded by certain meet-ings among the foreign ministers of France, Britain, and America, to consider the present situation in the Middle East, and between the foreign ministers of these states and the prime minister of Turkey and the delegate of Greece, concerning the situation in Cyprus.

The fifteen ministers concluded their meetings in Paris on the night of Friday, December 14, with a communiqué in which they declared the necessity of following the developments of the situation in the Middle East region and the conditions prevailing in many of the states of Eastern Europe. The American Secretary of Defense likewise announced that his government would furnish the countries of the Pact with modern weapons capable of firing atomic projectiles. But what caught the observers' attention was the reservation shown by Mr. Dulles, the American Secretary of State, toward the recommendations approved by the Pact's council, providing that the member states of the Atlantic Pact consult together whenever pressing inter-national circumstances required such consultations. Mr. Dulles said that his government would undertake to inform its allies of every urgent development, but that it could not ask for con-sultation when actions demanded speed of execution — as, for instance, should People's China attack the territory of Formosa.

The American government announced in the middle of last month that it had allocated the sum of one billion and 300 million dollars to aid the British government in the economic crisis it is suffering after the economic

situation

created by the Suez crisis. It added that it would increase shipments of petroleum to the Western states harmed by the stoppage of navigation in the Egyptian canal.

His Excellency Mr. Shukri al-Quwatli, President of the

Syrian Republic, delivered on Thursday afternoon, December 6, a speech in the amphitheater of the Syrian University, in which he announced adherence to the policy his government has laid down toward the present Arab situation. His Excellency said: Syria belongs neither to the East nor to the West.