The Press SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 1951. Britain and Egypt

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26396, 14 April 1951, Page 6

The Press SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 1951. Britain and Egypt

There are good reasons for misgivings about the British Government’s policy toward Egypt; and they have been made explicit in the Conservatives’ attempt to have the question debated in the Commons. In the iong series of negotiations on strategic and economic matters since the war, the British Government has made concession after concession. From Egypt it has received none in return; indeed, every new concession has brought forth further demands. Public opinion in Britain has become increasingly critical of a policy which has seemed to many to be a particularly unpromising effort at appeasement. The Government survived by only three votes a motion of censure in the Commons which sought to condemn the new and perhaps too prodigal release of Egypt’s blocked sterling balances—which were largely accumulated, as the Opposition pointed cut, while British and Commonwealth troops, with no help from the Egyptian Army, were keeping the Germans and the Italians out of the Nile valley. This much-criti-cised agreement also contained a new provision for Britain to supply Egypt with additional oil—at the very moment when Egypt was refusing British oil-tankers passage through the Suez Canal. While the wisdom of these very considerable concessions was widely questioned in Britain, many were disposed to withhold judgment in the hope that British generosity on

economic matters would win the Egyptian Government to- a more reasonable attitude on the military and strategic issue dividing the two countries Egypt’s long-standing and clamant demand for the withdrawal of British troops from the Suez Canal zone, which they occupy under the provisions of the AngloEgyptian Treaty of 1938. But at the end of last week the diplomatic correspondent of the “Daily Tele“graph” reported that the British Cabinet had approved, in principle, the withdrawal of British troops “on condition that Egypt readmits “them Immediately if war becomes

"imminent”. The report has not been denied—nor the later circumstantial accounts of British proposals for filling what would be a dangerous gap in the strategic defences of the Middle East. It has

been stated that British withdrawal by stages over a period of a year or two years would be dependent on Egypt’s willingness to accept the principle of joint defence'in peace tim& The suggestion that Britain might strengthen nearby bases in the Middle East, keeping sufficient forces:on hand to occupy the Canal zone should war become imminent, will seem to most observers a des-

perate expedient. If the British Government is tempted to aejeept this expedient, which would seriously weaken the strategic positioh of the Western-countries in the Middle East, it will be on the grounds that good relations between 5 Britain and Egypt would win the goodwill and the active co-operation of Arab States which are now suspicious and resentful. It is easy to sympathise with Egyptian nationalist aspirations, and .the reasonableness of Egypt’s claims for revision of the 1936 treaty has been generally acknowledged. But it is doubtful whether this is the time for new ; and far-reaching concessions which might exchange the substance of military security in the Middle East for the shadow of this “goodwill “and support ”.