Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, The Near and Middle East, Volume IX, Part 2

641.74/10–653: Telegram

No. 1227
The Secretary of State to the Embassy in the United Kingdom¹

top secret
priority

Washington, October 6, 1953—7:33 p.m.

1800. Personal for Aldrich from the Secretary. We have refrained since talks here with Salisbury from attempting to act in any way as intermediary in the Suez negotiations. We adopted British thesis that if we would avoid this role and support British, that would produce desired results. Therefore, we have frequently urged Egyptians to modify their position to meet UK position. Last month British asked our support on three specific items which we gave fully because we were led to assume that these issues of “reference to Suez transit”, “availability” and “duration. were the only major matters that stood in the way of agreement. Our information is that Egyptians are prepared to meet substantially the British position on those three items. Now we learn somewhat to our dismay that the negotiations may collapse on the issue of what kind of uniform the technicians should wear, namely, whether they should be military uniforms or non-military uniforms.

It is still not our intention to intervene in negotiations. We hope that the information we have received is inaccurate and that an agreement will in fact be reached. We hope that not only because of its bearing on this particular situation but because of the fact that success in this instance will help greatly to make it possible for us together to achieve other successes.

Please present this personal viewpoint to Eden.²

Dulles

1. Repeated to Cairo as telegram 393. Drafted and approved by the Secretary of State.
2. Ambassador Aldrich reported in telegram 1474, Oct. 7, not printed, that he presented the contents of this telegram to Foreign Secretary Eden, who said that the United Kingdom was not in agreement with Egypt on the question of availability. The British wanted to have the base available in case of action by the United Nations in the same manner as in the case of an attack on any member of the Arab League. Eden believed this was the most important point of difference dividing the two sides. Regarding uniforms, Eden said that the technicians were part of the British Army, and that some sort of uniforms had to be worn on the base. (641.74/10–753)