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consultation together on all matters of importance or points of difficulty which might arise under the operation of any new agreement. (If agreed to, this would serve to put
negotiations on to a governmental level and, we might hope, provide for inter-governmental consultation for the future.)
(c) To suggest to the Persian Prime Minister that a negotiating
mission from this country should visit Tehran as soon as order had been restored in the oilfields.
If this approach met with an encouraging response, there would, I think, be great advantage in the negotiations themselves being begun under the aegis of His Majesty's Government. For this purpose I would suggest that the Mission contemplated in the preceding paragraph should be headed by a junior Minister, and accompanied by a Director of A.I.0.C. (preferably Mr. Jackson, the Deputy Chairman). The leader would be assisted by a team of experts from the Treasury, the Ministry of Fuel and Power and perhaps the Bank of England, and receive political advice from H. M. Ambassador at Tehran.
14.
(i)
(ii)
To sum up, I would ask approval:
To the proposal in paragraph 4(i) as the basis on which negotiations with the Persians might open.
To my instructing H. M. Ambassador at Tehran to take the informal sounding indicated in paragraph 10 and, if the reaction were favourable, to go on to suggest to the Persian Prime Minister that a Mission of the kind proposed in paragraph 11 should- visit Tehran as soon as order had been restored in the oilfields.
Foreign Office, S. W.1.,
20th April, 1951.
H. M.
a4a
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