dated October 11, 1951: Iran Willing to Negotiate with U.K.

Persia's Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Hussein Fatemi, said at a press meet in the United Nations' offices in New York that his country was ready to resume oil negotiations with Britain, and there was no warrant for U.N. intervention. Several times he repeated the assertion that all that was required was similar goodwill on Britain's part. (The scheduled Security Council meeting to discuss the oil dispute was likely to be postponed from the 11th, by a day or two.) Mr. Fatemi's observations were along familiar lines: The last standing Persian offer to Britain could be the basis for future negotiations; the oil dispute was solely a domestic matter, and not one for the U.N. to take up; the settlement offer made to the British was not necessarily the basis for any agreement with some other oil company; and, Persia was quite confident of working the Abadan refineries without British help.

Mr. Fatemi added that Premier Mossadeq, who had come to New York, was empowered to resume negotiations with Britain on the dispute within the framework of the nationalisation law, and listed the following as the crux of Persia's latest offer to Britain: After investigating the legal claims of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, Persia will pay any legitimate claims.

Persia will sell the same amount of oil to Britain at the international price as bought previously from the Anglo- Iranian Oil Company, engage all the technical oil experts who had worked in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and pay them the same salaries as before, and, put in a foreign Director with technical responsibilities to head the Refinery Department, with the Teheran government deciding what nationality that man should be.

Unanimous Egyptian Move Against Britain

A Cairo report said that Egypt's Opposition parties had decided to give unanimous support to the move proposed by the ruling Government of Nahas Pasha to pass a legislation abrogating the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, and declaring King Farouk as King of the Sudan as well. Spokesmen of the Nationalist, Saadist, Liberal, and Socialist parties pledged their members' total support to the government.

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