Official Committee on the Middle East: Meetings 1-5; Papers 1-18

This file contains memoranda for the Official Committee on the Middle East’s minutes of meetings from 19 January 1960 to 1 November 1960. Those relevant to the Gulf are reports and memoranda concerning:

• A review of the Middle East situation, including reference to: Arab opposition to the Israeli plan for the Jordan waters, the drought in Jordan, the change in the Kuwaiti currency, the political situation in Iraq, and the economic scene in Egypt (1st)
• HMG's defence policy in the Gulf; and the question of whether HMG should aim to maintain a capacity to intervene in Kuwait, and elsewhere in the region, if Britain were to lose its base in Aden (2nd, 10, 13, 14, 16)
• 'The Middle East and future world oil supplies', including reference to: anxieties in the West over the consequences of oil production in the Middle East, due to the increasing supplies of crude oil underway from Algeria and later expected from Libya (1)
• 'The international oil situation', including reference to: surplus production and some of its implications, the position of various oil exporting countries, and oil prices (2)
• ‘Possible trouble spots in the Middle East over the next six months’, including a map of the Middle East (3)
• Possible consequences for Egypt, if the Soviet Union choose to finance the second stage of the Aswan High Dam Project (4)
• ‘The threat to Jordan during 1960’ (6)
• The Central Treaty Organization, including reference to: British aid, the Agricultural Machinery Training Centre at Karaj in Iran, the Ankara-Tehran-Karachi microwave link, the Turkey-Iran railway, the financing of joint projects, mineral development, labour and social affairs, and the Multilateral Technical Cooperation Fund (8)
• ‘The outlook in Yemen’ (9)
• Britain’s commercial relations with Egypt (15, 17)
• ‘Chinese communist activities in the Middle East and Africa’ (18)