Office of the Historian

890f.01/15

The Acting Secretary of State to the Minister in Egypt (Gunther)

Washington, February 28, 1930.
No. 100

Sir: The Department has received your despatch No. 315 of January 11, 1930,5 with regard to the recognition by this Government of the Kingdom of the Hejaz and of Nejd and its Dependencies, and has noted with interest your views that the time has come when favorable consideration may be given to the formal request for recognition made by the Acting Director of Foreign Affairs of the Hejaz in his note of September 29, 1928, addressed to the Secretary of State.

The Department has taken due note of the conclusion by the Hejaz Government during recent months of treaties with Germany,6 Persia7 and Turkey,8 and of the more recent action of several Powers in raising the rank of their representation at Jeddah to diplomatic status, and considers that these developments are pertinent to the consideration of eventual recognition by the United States. Inasmuch, however, as the final decision in this matter may be largely influenced by the character and extent of American commercial interest, actual as well as potential, in the Hejaz, the Department would be glad to receive any information available to you on this subject.

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For your confidential information it may be stated that the Department is at present inclined to the opinion that if, and when, recognition is extended to the Government of King Ibn Saud, it should at the same time be extended to the Government of the Iman of Yemen.9 The Department does not contemplate that it will be in a position to give further consideration to the question of recognition of either of these States until it has determined the character of American representation in Iraq. A decision in this latter question must await the ratification of the recent tripartite convention between the United States and Great Britain and Iraq.10

I am [etc.]

For the Acting Secretary of State
G. Howland Shaw
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. Signed at Cairo, April 26, 1929; League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. cxv, p. 265.↩
  3. Signed at Teheran, August 24, 1929; ibid., vol. cvi, p. 269.↩
  4. Signed at Mecca, August 3, 1929; British and Foreign State Papers, vol. cxxxi, p. 491.↩
  5. See Foreign Relations, 1927, vol. iii, pp. 825 ff.↩
  6. Post, p. 302.↩