WORD OF CAUTION

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 221, 7 December 1927, Page 9

WORD OF CAUTION

DEAD SEA MINERALS CONCESSION QUESTION British Wireless—Press Assn.—Copyright RUGBY, Monday. Questions were again asked in the House of Commons to-day regarding the concessions for exploiting Dead Sea minerals. The Under-Secretary for the Colonies, Mr. W. G. Ormsby-Gore, said negotiations were proceeding on behalf of the Governments of Palestine and Transjordania, with a view to safeguarding the interests of those Governments in any confessions which would be granted. The question of possible relations with a German monopoly would be borne in mind. He would i.ia to point out that there had been so much exaggeration as to the deposits that he must enter a word of caution with regard to the salts, which were not only of potash. The Transjordanian Government was a Government of a mandated territory and its life had to be preserved. He understood the theory was that the frontier between Palestine and Transjordania ran somewhere down the middle of the Dead Sea. MORE NEGOTIATIONS When he was asked whether negotiations for a concession had been undertaken with Mr. Novemeysky or Major Tullock, Mr. Ormsby-Gore replied that negotiations were proceeding with these gentlemen jointly. Mr. Novomeysky was an engineer with local experience, and also with experience in the separation of mineral salts by evaporation. He had for some time been carrying out experiments on the shores of the Dead Sea. —A. and N.Z.