ANGLO FRENCH NIGER RIGHTS.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 3735, 9 May 1899, Page 6

ANGLO FRENCH NIGER RIGHTS.

CONVENTION STIPULATIONS APPROVED. PARIS, Monday. The Committee of the Chamber of Deputies to which the matter was referred has approved the terms of the Convention lately arrived at between the French and British Foreign Offices for the delimitation of the spheres of interest of the two countries in' the African territory between the Nile and the Niger. The committee has also endorsed the earlier convention fixing the respective spheres of interest of the two countries on the upper portions of the Niger. [lt may be remembered that under this Convention between Great Britain and Prance as to their respective rights in Africa in the Nile and Niger: regions, the former obtained rights over the whole , of the Bahr-cl-Ghazal and all of the old provinces of Egypt to the west of the Nile; while France received less extensive areas further west—namely Wadai, Bagirmi and Kanem. Tire formal granting of these territories has been avoided, but both countries have pledged themselves to respect the line of demarcation between the two spheres of influence. Thp convention, notes the /‘‘Times,” merely draws a line “running roughly north and south, and pledges England not to acquire cither territory or political influence to the west of this line, and France not to acquire them to the east of it. ' The line begins on the northern frontier of the Congo State at the watershed of the Congo and the Nile, and follows that watershed to 11 degrees north. From this point onwards to 1 15 degrees north it is to bo traced by a mixed commission between Darfur and Wadai, leaving the former to .England and the latter to France.” Besides the territories mentioned as obtained by France, the Tibesti region to the south-east of Tripoli is included in the French sphere, and her claims are now uncontested, as far as Great Britain is concerned, from the Congo and the Übangi over the districts named to her Mediterranean' possessions of Algeria and Tunis. Under the convention now satisfactorily concluded, both countries have secured, so far as mutual agreements between themselves can secure it, a huge accession of territory wherein to exert their energies. It remains to he seen which of them will make the best use of what they have gained.]