Справка.
Free Territory of Trieste. Information.
TRIESTE (Free Territory of Trieste) - was an independent territory situated in Central Europe between northern Italy and Yugoslavia, facing the North part of the Adriatic Sea, under direct responsibility of the United Nations Security Council in the aftermath of World War II. Area - 738 sq.km. Population - 330 000. Capital - Trieste. Since 1382, Trieste had been part of the Habsburg monarchy, whilst Istria had been divided for centuries between the Habsburg monarchy and the Republic of Venice. The population of the territory has been diverse and mixed, with different. Italian-speakers have been predominant in most urban settlements and in the coast with strong minorities of Slovenes and Croats, especially in Trieste district where Slovenes represented a third of the population by the end of World War I. In 1921, after World War I, Italy annexed Trieste, Istria and part of modern-day western Slovenia. In 1924, Italy annexed the Free State of Fiume, now the city of Rijeka in Croatia. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Slavic population was subjected to forced Italianization and discrimination under the Italian fascist regime. A few Slovenes and Croats consequentially emigrated to Yugoslavia, while some joined the TIGR resistance organization, whose methods included more than 100 acts of terrorism mostly against the exponents of the Italian authorities in the region (especially in the Provinces of Trieste and Gorizia). When the Fascist regime collapsed in 1943 and Italy capitulated, the territory was occupied by German forces who created the Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral, the capital of which was Trieste. The Yugoslav 4th Army, together with the Slovenian 9th Corps, entered Trieste on May 1, 1945, after a battle in the town of Opicina. The 2nd Division (New Zealand) of the British 8th Army arrived on the next day and forced the surrender of the 2,000 German Army troops holding out in Trieste, who had warily had refused to capitulate to partisan troops, fearing they would be executed by them. An uneasy truce developed between Allied and Yugoslav troops occupying the area until British Gen. Sir William Morgan proposed a partition of the territory and the removal of Yugoslav troops from the area occupied by the Allies. Josip Broz Tito agreed in principle on May 23, as the British XIII Corps was moving forward to the proposed demarcation line. An agreement was signed in Duino on June 10, creating the Morgan Line. Yugoslav soldiers withdrew by June 12, 1945. In January 1947, the United Nations Security Council approved Resolution 16 under Article 24 of its charter calling for the creation of a free state in Trieste and the region surrounding it. On September 15, 1947, the peace treaty between the United Nations and Italy was ratified, establishing the Free Territory of Trieste. Official languages were Italian and Slovene with the possibly use of Croatian in the portion of Zone B south of the Dragonja river. However, the territory never received its planned self-government and it was maintained under military occupation respecting the administrative division into two zones as decided by the Morgan Line: Zone A, which was 222.5 km² and had 262,406 residents including Trieste, was administered by British and American forces, while Zone B, which was 515.5 km² with 71,000 residents including north-western Istria, was administered by the Yugoslav National Army. On 5 October 1954, the London Memorandum was signed in the British capital by ministers of the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, and Yugoslavia. It gave former Zone A with Trieste to Italy for an ordinary civil administration, and Zone B, which had already incorporated a communist government since 1947, to Yugoslavia. In 1975 the bilateral Treaty of Osimo was signed in Osimo and ratified 2 years later, definitively stopping respective claims over the former Free Territory of Trieste by Italy and Yugoslavia, as the London Memorandum only disestablished the territory de facto, but not de jure.
