Feisal Acts to Promote Arab Accord

Manawatu Times, Volume LVI, Issue 5618, 6 April 1931, Page 10

Feisal Acts to Promote Arab Accord

IRAK MONARCH’S MISSION AIMS AT PEACE TREATIES IN MIMDLE EAST. PAN-ARAB MOVEMENT BELIEVED POSSIBLE. JERUSALEM, Feb. 27. The pacification of the Middle East is expected to follow tho mission on which King Foisal of Irak is sending his Premier, Nuri Pasha, to arrange foreign Bonvolsiuago (good neighbour) treaties with Transjordan, the Ilejaz, the Nejd and Yemen. Nuri Pasha will visit King Ibn Saud for the purpose of scaling the negotiations promisingly begun at a meeting between King Feisal and the Wahabi monarch, but not since* carried to a conclusion. It is still doubtful, however, whether the Premier will meet Imam Yalila, ruler of Yemen. Yemen is relatively unimportant from Irak’s viewpoint, everything hinges on Ibn Baud’s attitude toward a pan-Arabian pact. Assuming that present hindrances to an understanding be removed —Ibn Saud paying the agreed compensation for tribal raids into Irak, and Feisal satisfying Ibn Saud that he tried to persuade Nejd rebels to return to their country—there still remain differences of a less tangible nature. Religious senism divides the Wahabis from Sunnis, while it is still remembered that Ibn Saud brought clown the Hashemite rules from tlic Hojaz throne, degrading and exiling both the father and the brother of the Irak ruler, who is now striving to achieve some form of Arab unity.

If Irak ami Hcjaz and tho Nejd, under Ibn Saud, reach an agreement, Syria and Lebanon cannot come in because of French tutelage, while an alliance presupposes independent States. Palestine is in a similar case, owing to the British mandate.

Yemen, moreover, has not forgotten Ibn Saud’s annexing of Asir. The Imam might readily enter into a treaty with distant Irak, but nothing short of force would make him acknowledge a neighbouring rival’s claims to supremacy in Arabia.

The Jewish world is eagerly following developments, since a tranquil and prosperous Middle East will advance the Palestine project, while a bellicose, united Arabia inevitably means exclusion of non-Arabs, especially the Jews. Zionism appears to dislike a pan-Ara-bian ring drawn around it, being anxiously solicitous that calm prevail in what has been called the Arab sea in which Palestine is a tiny island.