It is also the symbol of her historic Drang nach Westen — an extension of the Czarist policies originating in the 18th Century.The Danube River Conference of 1948 was held in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, to develop a new international regime for the development and control of the Danube in the wake of World War II.
[2]: 46–47 The major result of the conference was known as the Belgrade Convention, which ousted the non-Danubian powers from the international agencies that had controlled the commerce and physical care of the river for decades.
[2]: 55 Postwar discussion of the Danube River was begun by the United States in 1945 when President Harry S. Truman proposed at the Potsdam Conference that freedom of navigation should be assured on Europe's inland waterways.
[2]: 48 The foreign ministers of Great Britain, France, the USSR, and the United States stipulated that: Navigation on the Danube shall be free and open for the nationals, vessels of commerce and goods of all states, on a footing of equality in regard to port and navigation charges and conditions for merchant shipping.
[1]: 27 The Big Four also decided that a conference should be held within six months after the treaties came into force "to work out a new convention regarding the regime of the Danube.
"[3]: 316 In February 1948 the United States proposed calling a conference, thus averting a multilateral pact that might have been concluded among the Eastern European countries.
For months, Russia and Eastern Europe had been on the losing side of nearly every vote of importance in the United Nations sessions at Lake Success, New York.
[2]: 49 Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky told the Western delegates: "The door was open for you to come in.
[2]: 49–50 The delegates also rejected a Western attempt to have Austria seated, if not at the conference, then in the international commission that the meeting was developing.
[2]: 50 A U.S. proposal that the new commission be brought into some kind of liaison with the United Nations, through appeal to the International Court of Justice in case of dispute and in periodic reports to the Economic and Social Council, was also defeated.
America came to the table with a full delegation of experienced transportation men, maritime lawyers, and other experts who worked out a detailed draft convention.
Ignoring the fact that they had agreed in 1938 to turn the European Commission of the Danube over to the river-bordering powers (headed by Nazi Germany), they insisted that the Convention of 1921 was still in force and that their rights could not be abolished without their consent.
Delegate Cavendish Cannon often talked and acted as though merely technical matters were involved and, in the words of one correspondent, showed "all the brilliance of a cigar-store Indian."
Both of the latter were technically under the control of the main commission, members of which were Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, the USSR, and Yugoslavia.