Eden lied about Suez

Press, 5 January 1987, Page 3

Eden lied about Suez

NZPA staff correspondent London Cabinet documents made public under the 30year rule show how the British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, and Foreign Secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, misled Parliament and the country over the “Suez Crisis” in 1956. The prove that Eden lied when he said Britain’s invasion of Egypt in November that year was designed to stop an Arab-Israeli conflict. But not all the Cabinet debates on the campaign; which ended in a humiliating climbdown by Britain in the face of United States pressure, were released. The conclusions of a Cabinet . meeting on December 2, 1956, have been withheld for a further 20 years. According to a recent biography of

Eden, it was at that meeting that the Lord Privy Seal, R. A. Butler, urged that the Government should agree to a United Nations force occupying the region for “domestic political reasons” and Lloyd spoke of possible United States oil sanctions and of potentially dire political consequences in the Middle-East. After joint French-Brit-ish air strikes in late October, British and French troops invaded Egypt on November 5, a week after Israel had launched an attack. The British and x French agreed to a ceasefire on November 6 and withdrawal was accepted on December 3. Eden resigned a month later on “health grounds.”

Eden said at the time that the Anglo-French intervention was in order to separate Israeli and Egyptian forces and stop the fighting, leaving the Suez Canal clear for shipping.

The documents released last week confirm what historians had always suggested was the real reason for the invasion: that the British Cabinet felt that the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had nationalised the canal on July 26, should be toppled and replaced by a govern-

ment sympathetic to Britain. The Cabinet papers provide no evidence of collusion between Britain, France and Israel but it is clear that the Cabinet had been told an Israeli attack was imminent shortly be-

fore Israeli troops crossed the Egyptian border on October 29. In Parliament on December 20 Eden denied “any prior agreement with Israel” or foreknowledge of Israel’s plans. Evidence of collusion already exists. Lloyd met secretly with French and Israeli leaders at Sevres, France on October 22, when a joint attack on Egypt was discussed. Lloyd’s mission was kept secret from the Cabinet. The Cabinet papers of October 23 fail to record that Lloyd and his assistant private secretary, Donald Logan, had travelled to France on a R.A.F. flight the previous day. Lloyd wrote in his memoirs that the meeting ended in an agreement that Israel would attack Egypt on October 29. Britain and France would issue a 12-hour ultimatum to Nasser to allow AngloFrench troops into the canal area to ensure clear passage for ships. This provided a legal, moral

and political justification for the invasion, Lloyd wrote.

Copies of the agreement are held in French and Israeli archives, according to “The Times,” but none exists in Britain. Logan told the newspaper this was because Eden personally ordered the British copy to be destroyed. He also sent Logan back to France to persuade the French to destroy their copy, but the French Foreign Minister, Christian Pineau, refused.

The Cabinet papers show that Lord Mountbatten, First Sea Lord, made a last minute appeal to Eden to call off military action against Egypt. He acknowledged his direct approach broke the custom of serving officers “but I feel so desperate

about what is happening that my conscience would not allow me to do otherwise.”

When he was rebuffed, he wrote to Lord- Hailsham, the First Lord of the Admiralty: “However repugnant the task, the Navy will carry out its orders. Nevertheless, as its professional head, I must register the strongest possible protest at this use of my service.” Another military leader stuck his oar in. Lord Montgomery, the World War II hero and then deputy-supreme commander of N.A.T.0., proposed troops should land at Matruh then advance and capture Cairo. The Defence Minister, Anthony Head, told Eden such a landing was impractical, as there were insufficient landing craft.