ملف رقم ٣٤٥ لسنة ١٩٠٨ الجزء الثاني "المحمرة: الوضع. نزاع الشيخ مع والي البصرة. تقليد الشيخ وساماً. تجديد التطمينات للشيخ". [و‎‎٩‎٣] (٥٦٦/١٩٠)

CONFIDENTIAL.
1
e
Sir Edward Grey to Sir G. Barclay (Tehran).
(No. 263.) Foreign Office, September 12, 1910, 3*25 p.m.
YOUR telegram No. 346 [of 1st September].
I share Lientenant-Colonel Cox’s opinion, and I agree that the sheikh has been
badly treated by the Turks. We are bound to use our good offices to secure an
adjustment and to guard against a repetition of offensive action. The ownership of so
much land on the Turkish side and the presence of many Arab subjects perhaps to
some extent justify Turkish suspicions in their present susceptible mood, and it seems to
me that some compromise must in the end be found if an adjustment is to be secured and
a repetition of the same sort of incident avoided. I would propose in the first place
to inform, the Porte that His Majesty’s Government are bound, under agreement with
the sheikh, to use their good offices on his behalf in a dispute with a foreign Power,
and say that His Majesty’s Government have most carefully gone into the whole
history of the recent dispute, and can see no justification whatever for the harsh
and aggressive action of the vali, especially in the attack on Zain, resulting in the
death of a wife of the sheikh, and for the new decree forbidding him to registei land in
the Bussorah vilayet, which seems to be contraiy to Ottoman law.
If we ask for an apology, for the removal of the vali, or for compensation, we must
maintain our demands should the Porte refuse compliance. We are not bound to do
more than use our good offices, but if this fails and we do not insist if necessary, by
threat of force—should we then not lose prestige with the sheikh, or would our
intervention reassure him, even if the result were not satisfactory at any rate, at once .
What, in your view, is the minimum for which we could ask, in view of the fact that j
we are now ready to give the new assurance, and are advising the King to confer the j
K.C.I.E. ? Assurances and honours had better be simultaneous.
(Repeated to Constantinople, No. 275.)
[592—436]