EASTERN DEPARTMENT 1954 ARABIA FROM Received in Registry— REFERENCES MINUTES Gibson) and If the Sultan knew about the proposed lease of Gwadur to the Pakistanis, and if he were in favour of it, I imagine he would not bother about making plans for developing Gwadur. (Print) 109886 2. The Pakistanis have objected to these schemes in the past and are likely to 80 again. If they take over Gwadur, they will want to do all the development of the fisheries themselves. They will be inclined, therefore, to cancel any arrangements which the Sultan may have made and substitute their own. (How disposed of) 3. It does not seem quite fair to the Sultan to encourage him now to develop Gwadur when we will probably be encouraging him to lease it to the Pakistanis in the near future. 4. I suggest that we should tell Bahrain to give the Sultan the information which he has asked for about the firm. They can hardly avoid doing this. But we should also tell them not to encourage him at the moment over this plan. 5. We should do all that we can to speed up the question of the lease so that we can broach it to the Sultan as soon as possible. (Action completed) (A.D.Parsons) July 12, 1954
