CAB129-33 — Page 306

In addition, it is essential, in the view of the Sub-Coinmittee,

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that there should be some objective test of the "partisan" organisation itself ami, as the test suggested at sub-paragraph 5(b) above failed to secure general support at the 1947 Geneva Conference of Government Experts page 307 of 488

the sub-Committee recommend instead the inf

the

ΟΙ

Pagollowing qudition:

"that the headquarters of the organisation should have effective

control of all the lower formations and units and should

+

be capable of being communicated with effectively and of replying to communications".

The Sub-Committee consider that this represents the utmost limit to which the United Kingdom could go in order to meet the views of the French delegation and the delegations from other countries which were occupied during the Second World War. It does not stipulate that the whereabouts of the "partisan" headquarters should be discolsed; but it rests on the view that no power could accept obligations towards a body with which it was impossible to communicate. The methods by which communications were sent to, and received from, resistance movements in the occupied countries during the Second World War were varied and many; the Sub- Committee suggest that this fact is well known and that the test they offer is, therefore, one capable of being applied objectively during any future war.

13.

•

The Sub-Committee think it desirable that any treaty obligation towards "partisans" should most certainly be dependent on reciprocity (see sub-paragraph 5(c)(iv) above). Nevertheless they have no doubt, at any rate so far as United Kingdom or other British Commonwealth forces are concerned, that they would, in fact, extend to "partisans" captured by them approximately the same treatment as was given to recognised prisoners of war, and that this would be done for admin- istrative convenience as well as on humanitarian grounds.

14. The Sub-Committee therefore recommend that the conditions set out in sub-paragraph 5(a) above should be modified to exclude the words "habitually and consistently" from sub-paragraph 5(c)(ii) and that the objective test in sub-paragraph 5(b) above should be replaced by that. suggested in paragraph 12 above. The Sub-Committee consider, however, that the decision to accept this recommendation should be taken at the

highest level in view of the factors set out in paragraphs 10 and 11 above.

Period during and conditions under which a "partisan" organisation may be recognised.

15.

Possible conditions of

Cupation"

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During the period 1939 to 1947 the term "occupied territory" might have been used to describe any of the following:-

(a) part of the territory of another belligerent while

active hostilities continued in another part of that territory;

(b) territory of another belligerent when that belligerent

continued active hostilities outside that territory (e.g. Norway after May 1940, Holland after June 1940, Greece after May 1942);

(c) territory of another belligerent when active hostilities

with the original Allies of that belligerent continued on or outside the territory of that belligerent even though the belligerent itself may have capitulated (e.g. France after June 1940);

(a) territory occupied without the agreement of an indigenous Government, but without active hostilities (see also sub-paragraph 16(b) below);

(e) territory occupied in the face of hostilities, but

without the declaration of war (e.g. Yugo-Slavia in