OIL DISPUTE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 22, 22 December 1932, Page 7

OIL DISPUTE

CONCESSION IN PERSIA. CONSIDERATION BY LEAGUE. DESIRE FOR AGREEMENT. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—-Copyright.) (British Official Wiriless.) RUGBY, Dec. 20. In reply to a telegram from the president of tho League of Nations Council, requesting that no step should be taken which might affect the status quo, and thus aggravate the dispute with Britain regarding tho Anglo-Per-sian oii concession, the Persian Government gives an assurance that it will “continue to abstain from any act calculated to aggravate or extend the alleged dispute.”

Tho Persian Government also expresses the belief that cancellation of the company’s concessions is not calculated to provoke conflict between tho two Governments, seeing that it has expressed a desire to arrive at am equitable agreement with the company. ROMANTIC STORY. BRITAIN’S NEGLECT OF FRIENDLY SHEIK. But for the mistaken policy of the British Government toward her former octogenarian ally, Sir Khazal Khan, tile trouble over the Persian oil leases would never have arisen, says the Mohammedan correspondent of the Daily Mail. Once, when young, Sir Khazal, a paramount chief, discovered his Vizier to be too much interested in a girl whom he loved, and he summoned the Vizier to his presence. He praised his services and promised him “a jewel-, led casket containing what he. desired most.” Next day Sir Khazal Khan sent to the Vizier a casket containing the girl’s head. The Sheik possessed the power of life or death over much of the territory where the Anglo-Persian Company operated. Ho was intensely pro-British, and granted the leases on favourable terms and protected British interests and employees, to whom he granted subsidies. During the war he assisted operations in Mesopotamia and ensured the safety of the pipe lines in South Persia. But Britain, after the war, supported tho present Shah, who, objecting to the Sheik’s local omnipotence, determined to destroy him, and Britain, although she had given the Sheik a knighthood, failed to support him. The Sheik fled, and eventually was decoyed to Teheran by offers of friendship, and became, virtually, a prisoner. The Shah was thus enabled to consolidate his power and pinprick Britain, this culminating in the cancelling of tho concession.