THE SUDAN AND EGYPT

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5312, 27 January 1947, Page 4

THE SUDAN AND EGYPT

" 11 — — 1 rpHE month or so since NokE rashy Pasha became Prime | Minister has brought no im- ^ provement in Egypt's relations with Britain and a revised Brit-ish-Egyptian • treaty seems as far from conclusion as ever. Even the most incurab'le optimist coulcl have expected no better news. When he took office early last month, Nokrashy Pasha was at some pains to emphasise his Government's view that the Sudanese were not to be free to chodse their own f uture status — that is, be free to declare themselves totally independent. The arrangement reached in December by Mr. Bevin and the then Pfime Minister of Egypt, Sidky Pasha, meant, according to Nokrashy Pasha, that the Sudan was td be "united with Egypt under the Egyptian Crown forever." With these words Nokrashy Pasha ,closed the door to compromise — the door that his predecessor, in all i his public pronouncements on the Sudan, nad carefully kept open. They meant ' that, if agreement were to be reached, one side or the other must publicly retreat ; and it was diffi- * cult and even impossible to hold out any hope that, left to themselves, the parties would resolve | their differences and so clear the j way to the wider agreement | securing Britain's strategical j interests in the Canal. I It is little wonder, then, that I as failure stagnates, it should more and more be thought desir--able in Egypt to refer the dispute to the United Nations. The promise of this course is dubious, however. For instanee, _ 1 Britain could fairly argue that _ an appeal to the United Nations r is premature; that the treaty itself provides for recourse to an arbitrator accepted by both parties, or, in default of their agreeing, to the Council of the League of Nations, only when the 20-year term of the treaty has run. The United Nations. as its handling of the IndianSouth African dispute indicated, has stil Ito show a capacity for dispassionate judgment; - and ■ Britain, disliking the risks of waiving the disputes clause, might well insist accordingly that a compact willingly made | in 1936 is still one that Egypt must honour. It would perhaps be easier to "] | see a way out of the Sudan impasse but that the United I Nations, in dealing with India's j complaint against South Africa„ i set an unhappy precedent. The j issue there was legal as well as moral, and the United Nations chose to decide it without seeking the legal advice General Smuts properly asked it to obtain from the International Court of Justice. I The Sudan offers, essentially, 8 a complex legal problem. The 1 Egyptians claim that it is theirs J by right of conquest. When I Mehemet Ali, governor of Egypt 1 under its Turkish sovereign, | subdued the country in 1820-22, I it remained a province of Egypt 1 until the Mahdist revolt of 1885, three years after Britain enterecl upon her military occupation of Egypt. The native regime inaugurated by the Mahdist revolt was overthrown, by British and Egyptian forces, at the battle of Omdurman in 1898. Both the Condominium Agreement of 1899 and the AngloEgyptian Treaty of 1936, in the view of some English writersr shelved the question of sovereignty over the Sudan; accordingly to ofhers, they vested sovereignty jointly in Egypt and , Britain. To determine where

sovereignty resides, and so establish a sound basis for further international action, is a task which the United Nations could prqfitably propose. to the International Court of Justice.