ملف رقم ٤٣٤٥ لسنة ١٩١٢ "السكة الحديدية العابرة لبلاد فارس" [و‎‎٦‎١] (٣٣٠/١٢٦)

’ “
[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Gove rnment.]
[B]
PERSIA.
^ ^ ——
CONFIDENTIAL. Section 5.
[3149] No. 1.
Sh' H. Llewellyn Smith to Sir Edward Grey.—{Received January 21.)
[January 21.]
Dear Sir Edward Grey, Board of Trade, January 20, 1913.
AT the meeting of the Defence Sub-Committee on the Trans-Persian Railway
you may remember that I raised the question of the possibility of securing predominant
British control over the Persian Gulf section of any railway which might be carried
out under a concession obtained by the Societe d’Etudes. I understood the reply to
be that there was no difficulty in proposing such a condition, and that Russia had in
fact already stipulated for Russian predominance over the section of the railway
falling within her sphere. There was no opportunity of pursuing the matter further
at the meeting, but I still feel in some doubt as to the actual position, for two reasons
(1) that we appear to have formally consented to a statute of the Societe d’Etudes
prescribing that any company constituted under a concession obtained by the societe
for the purpose of making a railway shall be controlled by Russian, French and
British interests in equal proportions. The provision is found in the protocol to the
statute on p. 26 of the pamphlet sent to Foreign Office in Mr. Baring’s letter of the
27th March, 1912, and British adhesion thereto is expressed in the Foreign Office
letter to Lord Erington of the 1st June, 1912. In these circumstances it would appear
that the societe is precluded by its constitution from entertaining any proposal for
predominant control by any of the three Powers over any particular railway. (2) The
second reason is that even if means were found to satisfy the Russian demand for
predominance within her sphere it by no means follows that we could secure
predominance outside our sphere, and as practically the whole of the railway Ispahan-
Bunder Abbas will lie outside our sphere any reciprocal arrangement with Russia for
predominance within our sphere would be quite useless to us. If the difficulties to
which I have called attention prove insuperable it seems to me that we ought to dis
courage the British group from proceeding further, since it seems to me an impossible
proposition that we should encourage a railway to be constructed from Bunder Abbas
into the interior of Persia in which we should have only a third of the control, i.e., no
certain control at all.
In these circumstances I have been thinking whether there is any way of recon
ciling the principle laid down (with our express approval) in the statutes of the societe
with what we regard at the Board of Trade as the essential condition that British
control should predominate in the Gulf section of any Trans-Persian line.
The only plan that occurs to me is this. Let the Trans-Persian Railway, Resht
to Bunder Abbas, be one concession, but let the actual line be constructed and
operated in two sections by two companies working in co-operation, Russian interests
predominating on the northern section, British in the southern, while the relative
interests of the three Powers in the enterprise as a whole are maintained on a basis of
absolute equality. An illustration will show that this may not be impossible. If, for
example, for the sake of simplicity, we suppose the northern and southern sections to
he equal, the following distribution of capital and control would effect the object
aimed at :—
Great Britain
France ..
Russia ..
[2763 5]
Northern
section.
Southern
section.
Railway
as a whole.
1
5
6
3
3
6
i v r
5
1
6
N2 6
)