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also helps our trading position. The Board of Trade consider that made in other paragraphs by the British Council and the Information Services to extend the programme of visits to the United Kingdom are of this nature and they would be glad to help in suggesting suitable people whose visits could result in the placing of orders in this country. Also in this category are the proposals by the Foreign Office to increase the Technical Assistance programme and to investigate urgently the possibility of providing more facilities for the Technical Training of Middle Eastern nationals. The measures suggested for improving the terms and conditions of service of Foreign Service Officers in the Middle East are also considered by the Board of Trade to be an important means of furthering these aims.
In addition, the Working Party wish to recommend that further study be given to a suggestion that the British Ambassador in Beirut should be provided with a fund to enable him to subscribe up to £1,000 a year for five years to the British Chamber of Commerce which is about to be established there. This Chamber of Commerce could serve as an information centre and reception point for businessmen visiting the whole of the Middle East. At a later date the the possibility of establishing a trade centre in connexion with it might be examined. The possibility of a similar subscription by H.M. Ambassador in Bagdad to the British Commercial Society there should also be investigated.
In the longer term, consideration should be given to whether any action is open to Her Majesty's Government to encourage United Kingdom firms to establish local organisations or companies in association with local businessmen, a development which would carry obvious political advantages while providing much needed channels for increased trade.
15. Medicine.—British teachers and doctors are already making a valuable contribution to the health of the area and to our own influence. In addition, the Order of St. John and the London Ophthalmological Institute are about to start research into the greatest scourge of the region, the eye disease trachoma, from which 50 per cent. of the total population and 90 per cent. of the Arab refugees are suffering. Consideration should be given to giving some financial assistance to this work.
16. Technical Education.—A questionnaire has been put to all Middle East Missions to obtain facts about the demand in the Middle East for technical education, the facilities at present provided, and the ways in which this country can help. A full report will be submitted as soon as replies have been analysed. In the meantime there are two institutions already being run on British lines or with British equipment. These are the Technical College at Bagdad, and the Engineering Faculty of the American University at Beirut. It is proposed that the British Council should subsidise one or two professorships at the former (see paragraph 7 (iii) above) and that a gift of equipment not exceeding £20,000 should be made. The latter is already being equipped with British machinery at the request of the American Dean of the Faculty. Some £50,000 worth of equipment has already been presented by British industry. A gift by Her Majesty's Government of a similar value would establish the practice of equipping this faculty with British equipment, with considerable advantage to our prestige and to our trade. Engineers trained on British machinery will prefer and specify it later on.
17. Nuclear Energy will not be an economic proposition in the Middle East for many years. But its emotional appeal is great, and the Arabs will not accept our word for the technical and economic difficulties. If we do not help them they will turn elsewhere. Further consideration should be given to an offer to train in the United Kingdom research teams from selected countries.
18._Labour affairs are a subject which requires increasing attention in the Middle East. Up to date it has been possible for the Labour Counsellor at the British Embassy, Cairo, who also serves as a member of the Middle East Development Division, to cover labour questions throughout the Arab world with the help of our assistant. Now, however, the labour relations of the Oil Companies are becoming increasingly difficult, and there is at the same time a development of trade unionism in the Levant States, and a tendency for these trade unions to drift to the Left. The Working Party recommend that the possibility of attaching a Labour Attaché to the staff of the British Ambassador in Beirut, who would also cover Syria and Jordan, should be further considered.
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