DEADLOCK OVER SUDAN

Taranaki Daily News, 7 May 1930, Page 9

DEADLOCK OVER SUDAN

NEGOTIATIONS IN LONDON

LITTLE HOPE'OF A SOLUTION

ONLY OUTSTANDING POINT

British Wireless. Rugby, May 5. Negotiations with the Egyptian delegation were resumed at the Foreign Office this evening. The Foreign Secretary, Mr. A. Henderson, was accompanied by Lord Thomson, Secretary for Air, Lord Passficld, Secretary for the Dominions, Dr. Dalton, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Sir Robert Vansittart, Permanent Un-der-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and Sir Percy Loraine, High Commissioner in Egypt.

No solution of the deadlock has been found, nor is there any in sight. The situation created by a reference to going home by the Egyptian Legation was considered. After conversations lasting two hours and a-half, negotiations were adjourned until to-mor-row morning.

Soon after the two Egyptian emissaries had landed from Cairo in the afternoon the city was full of rumours that a breakdown of 'the Anglo-Egypt-ian conference was imminent on the question of the Soudan. The Australian and New Zealand Press Association was definitely informed that this was the only outstanding point on which the Egyptians were seeking more than last year’s draft treaty conceded. There are indications that Nafiae Pasha is disposed to forego the demands with a reservation that within a brief period, and subject to Egypt fulfilling its new role worthily, the question of the Soudan should be reviewed with the object of giving Egypt a greater measure of control. But at least three of Nairas’ Wafdist colleagues in London are completely truculent on the point as they feel it is the soundest basis of a rupture and most likely to raise the Wafd prestige in Egypt. Mr. Henderson and his colleagues, however, are immovable and are opposed tt> the thesis that Egypt and the Soudan are ethnologically one. They point out' that but for British aid and diplomacy the Soudan would irreparably have been lost to Egypt through the latter’s misgovernment. Should there be a breakdown Britain states it will stand behind the 1924 British declaration with reserved points ensuring unimpaired British control of the Empire gateway.