EGYPT AND THE SUDAN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21541, 13 January 1932, Page 6

EGYPT AND THE SUDAN.

A report from Cairo states that the Government of Egypt has reopened negotiations with Great Britain in regard to the control of the Sudan. The failure of the attempt by the British Government in 1929-30 to establish a fresh Anglo-Egyptian treaty was due, it may be recalled,, to the refusal of the Wafdists to accept the draft treaty as it related to the administration of the Sudan. Mr Henderson, the Foreign Secretary at that time, made an offer which represented “ the extreme limit” to which the British Government was prepared to go in meeting Egyptian demands on this question. It was to reaffirm the status of Egypt in the Sudan, as provided in the Condominium of 1889, and to allow the Egyptian Government to send a battalion into the territory. The refusal of the Egyptian Government to accept this proposal seemed somewhat inexplicable. The AngloEgyptian Condominium has survived in name only since 1924, when the Egyptian quota of the AngloEgyptian garrison was expelled after the murder of Sir Lee Stack, and the treaty would virtually have restored the previous Egyptian status. But in their attitude towards the British occupation of the Sudan the Egyptians have never been prepared to agree to a compromise of the only kind which Great Britain is prepared to offer. Egypt covets the territory, and apparently cannot realise that the British Government is sincere in its repeated declarations that it will never abandon the Sudan nor tolerate any attempt to disturb the territory. The of Egypt appears to be based on a specious claim that the Sudan is Egyptian by right of conquest. To this the obvious reply is that Great Britain has also conquered the Sudan, by force of arms, on more than one occasion, but has never’ shown any desire to annex the territory. In recent years the Egyptian Government has made the more specific claim that possession of the Sudan is necessary in order to secure the country’s water supply. It is a wholly untenable claim and is absurd in view of the fact that since the British undertook developmental works in the Sudan the water supply of Egypt has been more reliable than at any time in the past. The main reason for the refusal of Great Britain to allow Egypt to obtain control of the Sudan rests, however, on the fact that Egypt has proved herself unable to govern the territory satisfactorily. The Sudan under the British Administration has commenced a new chapter far different from its previously troublous history. Development has been interrupted only by seasons in which the Nile waters have been low, order has been maintained, and the conditions of work have been improved. It might, in fact, be said that of all the successful colonising undertakings of Great Britain that in the Sudan has been the most striking in its reclamation of a wilderness and its changing of the lot of a mixed population from’ poverty and disorder to peace and prosperity. The Sudanese themselves are very conscious of their good fortune, and have an utter dislike of Egyptian interference. The Egyptian Government apparently fails to recognise, also, that the British Administration has always safeguarded the consider-

able material Egyptian interests in the Sudan. The attempt to obtain some concessions for Egypt in the territory additional to those which have beien offered and rejected is not likely to move the British Government from a policy which has been constantly reaffirmed.