مجموعة ٢٨\ ٨٥ "بلاد فارس. العلاقات مع شركة النفط الأنجلو-فارسية التابعة للحكومة البريطانية." [و‎‎١‎٥] (٣٨٠/٣١)

Copy.
(E 1116/1/34).
An^lo-Iranian Company a nd the
^Black-mail 4 Payments.
pri t ■
'W-V W
Sir D. ’/v’aley told me this morning (a) that the $6v«rnment
Directors - Sir G. Barstow and Mr. Pack - were thit the
Treasury would not agree to assume liability for one half of any
further ’’blackmail" payments which the Company might v/ish to make;
(b) that in the Treasury view the undertaking about
"arrangements satisfactory to both parties" did not constitute any
commitment so far as the Treasury was concerned for continued
financial payments outside the Concession: and that if Treasury
agreed to such payments it would be on the score that they did not
feel entitled to press the Company unduly on the question of their
commercial interests.
Following on this conversation Sir W. Fraser came to see me
and left me the attached draft letters which the Company now wish
to exchange, not apparently with the Persian Minister, but with
the Persian Delegate to the Company.
He received what I told him about the Treasury’s rejection of
any financial commitment with some surprise, said that the
Government Directors had not made this clear so far, but gave it
as his opinion that, while the Comoany would not forego what they
imagined to be their claim on Treasury participation, they would
not hesitate to conclude their arrangement with the Persians without
any assurance of such participation.
Sir W. Fraser went on to say that his Board had felt it
impossible to raise the matter of the cancellation of the unfounded
charges brought against the Company under the ex-Shah’s regime
and even added that in this respect they were proposing to take
my advice. I did not fail to point out that v/hat I had said was
that the withdrawal of these charges did not seem to me to
represent an advantage which could be held to justify submitting
to the "blackmail" payments. It was quite a different thing
for the Company to say that they intended to submit to these
payments but agreed that it was not worth while to get the
charges withdrawn.
On the whole question Sir W. Fraser argued once more (and he
mentioned that the two Government Directors had made reservations
to allow their consulting the Government Departments concerned
and were not as yet to be understood as endorsing the draft letters)
that the essential thing was to secure the future goodwill of the
Persians and that this could not be done if no offer were made in
the fulfilment of the undertaking about a "satisfactory" agreement.
He repeated once more that the Company did not wish to secure any
modification of the Concession in return for the suggested payments
since "they felt both that no modification was required and that it
would be dangerous to do anything which might call the Concession
itself into question. Mr. Gass, their local representative, had
concurred/