The Sudan

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25089, 22 January 1947, Page 6

The Sudan

The month or so since Nokrashy Pasha became Prime Minister has brought no improvement in Egypt’s relations with Britain. A revised British-Egyptian treaty, as the Cairo correspondent of “ The “ Times ” reported on Saturday, seems as far from conclusion as ever. A few days earlier Reuter’s diplomatic correspondent had written in similar gloom. Even the most incurable optimist could have expected no better news. When he took office early last month, Nokrashy Pasha was at some pains to emphasise his Government’s view that the Sudanese were not to be free to choose their own future status—that is, be free to declare themselves totally independent. The arrangement reached in December by Mr Bevin and the then Prime Minister of Egypt, Sidky Pasha, meant, according to Nokrashy Pasha, that the Sudan was to be “ united with- Egypt under the “ Egyptian Crown for ever ”. With ■these words Nokrashy Pasha closed | the door to compromise—the door I that his predecessor, in all his public pronouncements on the Sudan, I had carefully kept open. They ' meant that, if agreement were to i ; be reached, one side or the other ! imust publicly retreat; and it was; ' difficult and even impossible to i 1 hold out any hope-that, left to them- ! : selves, the parties would resolve I their differences and so clear the | way to the wider agreement securing Britain’s strategical interests in the Canal. It is little wonder, then, that as ' failure stagnates, it should more ' and more be thought desirable in Egypt to refer the dispute to the United Nations. The promise of this course is dubious, however. For instance, Britain could fairly argue that an appeal to the United Nations is premature; that the treaty itself provides for recourse ■ to an arbitrator accepted by both parties, or, in default of their agreeing, to the Council of the League of Nations, only when the 20-year term of the treaty has run. The United Nations, as its handling of the In- I dian-South African dispute indi- I

cated, has still to show a capacity I for dispassionate judgment; and Britain, disliking the risks of waiv- ’ ing the disputes clause, might well j insist accordingly that a compact willingly made in 1936 is still one that Egypt must honour. It would perhaps tie easier to see a way out of the Sudan impasse but that the United Nations, in dealing with India’s complaint against South Africa, set an unhappy precedent. The issue there was legal as well as moral, and the United Nations chose to decide it without seeking the legal advice General Smuts properly asked it to obtain from the International Court of Justice. ; The Sudan offers, essentially, a Icomplex legal, problem. The Egyptians claim that it is theirs by right of conquest. When Mehemet Ali, governor of Egypt under its Turkish sovereign, subdued the country in 1820-22, it remained a province of Egypt until the Mahdist revolt of 1885, three years after Britain entered upon her military occupation of Egypt. The native regime inaugurated by the Mahdist revolt was overthrown, by British and Egyptian forces, at the battle of Omdurman in 1898. Both the Condominium Agreement of 1899 and the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, in the view of some English writers, shelved the question of sovereignty over the Sudan; according to others, they vested sovereignty jointly in Egypt and Britain. To determine where sovereignty resides, and so establish a sound basis for further international action, is a task which the United Nations could profitably propose to the International Court of Justice.