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THIS DOCUMENT IS THE PROPERTY OF HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY GOVERNMENT)
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SECRET
C.P.(51, 140
28TH MAY, 1951.
CABINET
COPY NO.31
EGYPT
27
DEFENCE NEGOTIATIONS
Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
My colleagues will recall that, following consideration of my memorandum of 30th March, 1951, on Anglo-Egyptian relations (C.P.(51) 95), it was agreed to instruct H.M. Ambassador in Cairo to reopen negotiations for a new defence agreement based on a revision of the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, on the basis of proposals worked out by the Chiefs of Staff (C.v.(51) 24th Conclusions, Minute 3). On 11th April Sir Ralph Stevenson put His Majesty's Government's new proposals to the Egyptian Government (Annex I). The Egyptian Foreign Minister showed no inclination to discuss the merits of these proposals, intimating at once that they were not an acceptable basis for negotiation from the Egyptian point of view. On 24th April the Egyptian Foreign Minister handed the Ambassador his Government's reply in the form of counter-proposals. The text of the Egyptian reply is given in Annex II.
2.
These so-called counter-proposals consist of little more than a reiteration of the well-worn Egyptian demands for British evacuation of Egypt and the Sudan, and offer no constructive basis for negotiation. The wide divergency between our own and the Egyptian approach to the defence issue offers little prospect of agreement and the problem therefore arises of how we can best contrive to keep the negotiations open without making any concessions of substance.
3.
I suggest that this might be achieved by broaching now with the Egyptian Government the question of the future of the Sudan. I have already circulated a paper on this question (C.P.(51) 131), setting out certain basic principles which we should be prepared to put to the Egyptian Government. As a next step we might therefore instruct H.M. Ambassador in Cairo to invite the Egyptian Government to discuss the Sudan on the basis of these principles, at the same time informing them of our disappointment at the wide gap which separates our respective points of view over the question of defence and adding that we are meanwhile making a careful study of the Egyptian counter-proposals.
4.
It does not seem likely that the Egyptian Government will find our proposals in regard to the Sudan any more acceptable than those in regard to defence and we cannot therefore expect to keep the discussion alive for long on this issue. As my colleagues will recall, however, the Cabinet agreed that our primary object should be to avoid a rupture with Egypt. When, therefore, the subject of the Sudan has been exhausted, we shall have to consider whether the next step might be to suggest to the Egyptian Govern- ment that some different basis of approach to the defence problem must be The possible, lines of such an approach are at present under study,
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