of the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States, and,
with respect to Italy, France too, in framing the said, peace
treaties. This means that before tire peace conference of rep-
resentatives of the 21 states is convened, these governments
must draw up agreed peace-treaty drafts. Any other interpre-
tation' might lead to a situation where, say, instead of one
draft, two drafts of a peace treaty with Italy might be saibmit-
ted to the conference. In that case one group of participants
in the conference would be signing one peace treaty, and
another group of participants, another peace treaty, which
would in fact moan the -collapse of the idea of a single peace
conference. If we followed such a line, we should not havo
one peace conference, but two peace conferences, and the
aspiration of the peoples for lasting peace would thereby be
frustrated. The inadmissibility of such a situation' is perfect-
ly obvious. The Soviet delegation accordingly could not agree
to the proposal made by the delegation of the United States
of America to set the date for the conference irrespective of
whether preliminary agreement is reached in preparing the
peace treaties. It is also perfectly obvious fhat this proposal
of the American delegation, which was supported by the
British delegation, ran counter to the decisions of the Berlin
conference and the Moscow conference, and in general was
liable to lead to most undesirable consequences from the
point of view of the further development of friendly relations
among the nations seeking to establish enduring peace.
Accordingly, the efforts of the Soviet delegation at the
Paris meeting were aimed precisely at achieving agreed de-
cisions on the mam questions of the draft peace treaties with
Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland. It should be
recognized that certain positive results have been- attained in
this respect, although they cannot be regarded as sufficient,
As a result of the labours of the Paris meeting, the prep-
aration of peace treaties for Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary
38