Berlin, May 13.
Japan has rejected the Italo-German offer to enter into a triangular military alliance, most reliable quarters here admitted today.
Japan has no reason to be hostile to the democracies and therefore will not enter into a military alliance with italy and the Reich, Tokyo told the axis powers when offered a military accord reliable sources admitted today.
Tokyo also argued that her main interests were concentrated in the Far East and, moreover, that there were economic reasons for her refusal because she has great commercial interests in the democratic countries, ihe same quarters added.
Dealing with the Italo-German alliance that has yet to be signed, they declared that parleys were still "dragging on two points" The first is, the automatic character of military assistance to be rendered by each to the other, and the second, the partition of zones of influence in South eastern Europe.
Semi-official quarters here in Berlin qualified as "premature" all foreign reports which announced that the signature of the military pact would take place on May 20.
Meanwhile, parleys are continuing and Italy and the Reich are expected to reach a compromise on the two onstanding points. Instead of automatic assistance in case of need, it understood that provisions will call for compulsory military consultations, As regards the second point, Italy has allegedly strongly insisted on her special interests in Hungary and Yegoslavia. But it is not known whether she based the question of preponderant Italian influence in these "zones" as a sine qua non condition for entering the alliance—
Havas.
Mr. Miura, who is proceeding Tokyo to confer with the For Office, continued his eastward journ by train leaving Sannomita station at 12.27 this noon.
The Japanese consular official was quoted as having declared that few people in Shanghai denied the necessity or reorganizing the S.M.C. for the sake of the maintenance of peace and order in the International Settlement, it being generally admitted that the present system, based upon the Land Regulations, was "a typical a achronism."
To settle the issue regarding the International Settlement in Shanghai fundamentally, Mr. Miura was reported to have said, it would be necessary to remove the foreign pressure' that is keeping China in the status of a semi-colony.
Questions requiring immediate attention, Mr. Miura was stated to have declared, were the revision or the abolition of the Land Regulations, a strict control of anti-Japanese publications, changes in the status of the Chinese courts and the prohibition of the display of the Chinese Nationalist flag.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.