SECRET - UKEB Foreign and Commonwealth Office London SW1 Telephone 01 - Your reference Col D H Bush AD of DP(C) Ministry of Defence MB7132 Our reference DP 13/432/2 NBLIOTTI Date 14 February 1974 BRITISH MILITARY ASSISTANCE TO OMAN (DP 4/74(C)(DRAFT) 1. As discussed, I write to give you FCO comments on the draft of DP 4/24(0). Even since we first saw the draft the situation has changed significantly with the Sultan's now expressed willingness to consider buying Jaguar. This must, we think, be discussed in the paper, though we realise that the precise terms of such references may be difficult to fix while replies to MUSSEC 28, and to the request for an air defence study (MUSSEC 24) are not yet ready. 2. At the present time, assuming as we must that the Sultan will buy an air defence system of some kind from somewhere, there are three possibilities of concern to us politically: (i) purchase of Jaguar (perhaps plus Harrier) and Rapier (ie MUSSEC 28); (ii) purchase only of some UK equipment, mainly missiles; this would probably be because Oman had bought Mirage aircraft and is the possibility implicit in paragraph 33 of the draft; (iii) no purchases of any equipment from the UK. Of these (iii) could concern us politically and militarily because of the consequent probably entry of French influence into Oman and the conduct of the war. We assume that CSAF will have disabused the Sultan of his apparent idea that the UK could help with running French equipment. We suggest that in paragraph 1 of Annex A these three possible degrees of UK involvement should be mentioned. 3. Our other main comment on the paper is that at some points it spreads outside Oman or to UK political considerations /(eg para 35) SECRET - UKEB
