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impediment to recovery than any reparation burden. It was pointed out, moreover, that the Hungarian Government itself had raised no objection to the reparation liabilities imposed by the Armistice Agreement. The United Kingdom and France were under an obligation to* vote for the agreed clause in the treaty, and there was therefore littlechance of the amendment being carried in the Balkans Economic Commission. New Zealand, however, voted for it in the Commission and abstained in the subsequent vote on the same issue in the Plenary Session.. The principle of keeping reparation claims as low as possible was not by itself a sufficient guide to the attitude to be taken in the case of Bulgaria, where the problem was inextricably entangled with political considerations, and in particular with the Yugoslav-Greek feud. Greece had estimated the total damage attributable to Bulgarian action as $985 million, and towards the end of the Commission's sessions presented a formal claim against Bulgaria for $l5O million. Yugoslavia,, by refraining from the presentation of any detailed estimate of damages, had allowed it to be understood that its claim on Bulgaria would not be seriously pressed, and it was therefore widely assumed that as the U.S.S.R. made no claim on Bulgaria, the only question remaining tobe settled was the determination of the precise amount to be allotted to Greece. In the last week of the Commission's sittings, Yugoslavia, however, also presented a detailed estimate of damage amounting in all to $1,540 million, and eventually proposed that the total Bulgarian reparation liability should be fixed at the nominal figure of $25 million, of which only 40 per cent, should go to Greece. In supporting this proposition, the Yugoslavs emphasized the weakness of the Bulgarian economy, the conversion of the Bulgarian Government and people to the true democratic faith, and the decision which had just been approved by a majority in the Economic Commission for Italy to recommend a reparation claim which, in the Yugoslav view, was a mere derisory 1 per cent, of the damage inflicted by Italy. The United States, taking Roumania as the most convenient standard of reference, argued that a rough comparison of the pre-war economic positions of Roumania and Bulgaria, based on national income and other relevant indices, justified placing upon Bulgaria a reparation burden of SIOO million. This calculation, however, as was admitted, took no account of the comparative immunity of Bulgaria from war devastation, so that there was no inconsistency in the subsequent United States vote in favour of an aggregate liability, to be equally divided between Greece and Yugoslavia, of $125 million, which subsequently received a majority of the votes in both the Balkans Commission and the Plenary Session. Among the ex-enemy satellite States, Finland alone had formally requested a reconsideration of her reparation liabilities, her Government placing it formally on record that " from the Finnish point of view it would be important if the reparation sum of 300 million dollars fixed.

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