MIDDLE EAST DEFENCES

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27193, 10 November 1953, Page 11

MIDDLE EAST DEFENCES

Maintenance Work In Canal Base K , (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, November 9. If Egypt succeeded in getting a British evacuation of the Suez Canal Zone, she would quickly feel th® heavy responsibility of keeping the £500,000,000 base in working order, says the correspondent in Cairo of the “Daily Telegraph.” He says that even with the initial aid of 4000 British experts, as has been suggested, Egypt would have to find many thousands of skilled technicians and workers to run the base. The base now holds 80,000 servicemen, but in war could equip and maintain more than 500,000 fighting men. "The base installations, airfields, and training zone sprawl over a desert belt 90 miles long and up to 60 miles wide reaching from Port Said to Suez. “Tel el Kebir itself is one of the biggest military installations in the world. Within its 171 miles perimeter are 37 miles of roads, 20 miles of railway, 100,000 tons of stores, an ordnance depot; huge workshops and a depot for 10,000 vehicles.

“In the nearby desert is an enormous ‘powder magazine’ zone of 20 square miles packed with thousands of tons of high explosives in halfburied store chambers, each sheltered by blast walls. “At Fayid there is an engineer stores department holding £20,000,000 worth of equipment. “The preservation of all this is a huge task. Twelve hundred Egyptians are employed in a fiye-year programme of scraping and painting metal. “The Canal Zone is studded with such depots. An underground petrol installation holds 65,000 tons of spirit. “The importance of full maintenance of the base canhot be over-estimated. “It is in the right situation and has all the advantages to supply the defence of the Middle East’’ OIL REFINERY FOR EGYPT CAIRO, November 8. The Egyptian Government plans to establish an oil refinery near Cairo linked to Suez by a 90-mile heavy oil pipeline estimated to cost £3,000,000. Dr. Rachikil ’ Barawi, head of the Industrial Credit Bank, said today. A second pipeline, 136 miles long, would alsc be built linking Cairo and Alexandria. The refinery would take about three years to complete, and its annual output would be about 1,000,000 tons.