Report Of The Commission Of Investigation Concerning Greek Frontier Incidents(1947)

On May 27, 1947, the Commission of Investigation Concerning Greek Frontier Incidents submitted its report to the Security Council. Appointed under the Security Council resolution of December 19, 1946, the Commission, composed of representatives of the eleven members of the Security Council, held the first of its 113 meetings in Athens on January 30, 1947.

The Commission had a secretariat of 27 persons, rotated the chairmanship weekly among its members, and decided that the liaison officers appointed by Greece, Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria would participate in ail public meetings on the same basis as had the representatives of these countries when the matter was originally before the Security Council.

A total of 256 witnesses or statements were presented, of which 79 were submitted by Greece, 22 by Albania, 33 by Bulgaria and 60 by Yugoslavia. Over 30 field inves­tigations were made in the four countries concerned, by the Commission itself or by one or another of the seven teams appointed by it.

The members of the Com­mission were: Australia, J. D. L. Hood; Belgium, Lt. Gen. Maurice Delvoie; Brazil, Antonio Mendes Vianna; China, Dr. Wunsz King; Colombia, Francisco Urrutia; France, Georges Daux; Poland, Jerzy Putrament; Syria, Ihsan el-Sherif; United Kingdom, R. T. Windle; United States, Mark F. Ethridge; and the Soviet Union, A. A. Lavrischev.

Following the resolution of the Security Council of April 18, 1947, the Commission set up a Subsidiary Group on April 30, with headquarters at Salonika, with its authority limited to

a) investigation of such incidents since March 22, 1947, as might be brought to its attention,

b) refusal to hear evidence which had been or could have been available to the Commission itself, and

c) re­quirement that no investigation would be made except by formal decision.

The report, prepared by two drafting committees under the chairmanship of Dr. Wunsz King (China) and Francisco Urrutia (Colombia), the latter of whom was the Commission's rapporteur, was in four parts. The first two parts, containing the history and organization, plus a survey of the evidence, were accepted by all repre­sentatives, although some minor reservations were entered by the United Kingdom and Soviet members.The conclusions of the Commission, embodied in Part III, were accepted by Aus­tralia, Belgium, Brazil, China, Colombia, Syria, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The general conclusion as about Macedonia issue was as follows:

2) The Yugoslav and Bulgarian Governments themselves revived and promoted a separatist movement among the Slav minorities in Macedonia. In making this finding, the Commission pointed out that some 20,000 Greek citizens had fled to Yugoslavia and some 5,000 to Bulgaria — most of them Slavs — and that the treatment of this group by Greek officials had "provided fertile breeding ground for separatist movements." In Yugoslavia, Macedonian separatism was the special goal of an organization called the NOF (National Labor Front) which had its headquarters in Skoplje and Monastir.

Below you can read the whole section that has as reference the Macedonia issue...

Sources:

International Organization, Vol. 1, No. 3, (Sep., 1947), pp. 494-508

A Decade of American Foreign Policy: Basic Documents, 1941-4,(U.S. Govt. Print. Off), 1950