Page 341 - Records of Bahrain (7) (i)_Neat

Visits by Middle. Eastern leaders, 1956 327
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0 «•'/Va/.ib) British Residency,
CONFIDENTIAL* Bahrain.
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June 25, 1956.'' •: *&b:
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.I -,. .lQ>y> letter No. '1631/81/56 of June 25th V if,
I recommended that Pandit Nehru should he induced not to •'make'.];, i-. ,
ia rofuejLling stop at Bahrain on his way hack to Indip .in^July./..j'jj-j:*.
'.'after the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, hecdu'ae' of.
the political capital made* out of his stop here on . June‘21 by^'ii'!
the local opposition. •'.*?• ' . ... ’ ; • ••vfiW'
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2, I should like now to rpise the general, .question of etops jjtv.
• made. in";B^»h'rain hy other political leaders and the*'effect’’whichK-
. these (ce[n. have on the local political situation and |the .use to
which ouch stops can he turned hy the local opposition. • Pandit
Nehru's !atop on June 21, on which I have already reported',' :was ‘j o
.a, classic vexamplo. Mr. Bandaranaike, the Prime Minister of
Ceylon,^stopped‘here on June 24 on his way to .'London by' Air
Ceylon, hut fortunately: it'.was in the middle'of the night, so ;': ’i
nothing happened. X did nothing about this as wo received no
official word from Ceylon. I only heard, unofficially, from
the Airline's agents here.' If he returns, as he presumably r
will, by the some route, he will stop here for forty minutes or;,
so about five o' clock In the afternoon, which would be a grand'1
time for a demonstration. ' Actually with him there is some, hope •
that nothing will happen as he is unknown and Ceylon Is-not-'
well known here. But he ha6 said that the British bases in • 1
Ceylon are to go, which would give the Committee of National*
Union a peg if they wished to use. it. A much greater danger
would he if Nasser, who is, I see from the press, to vi6it
Peking sometime.soon, were'to wish to call here, either on the :
way there or on the way hack. Then the fat. would he livthe .
fire I I suppose we' could prevent this by refusing permission .
for the aircraft to land, if it were military, though if it
were u civil plane of an I^C.A.O. state, permi6sio‘n' to land for "
technical purposes 6uch as refuelling would not, I believe, he '
required. The possibility of Nasser more or less forcing his
. way into Bahrain fills me with considerable alarm. It Is no \
doubt unlikely that he would call here because he could fly
direct from Cairo to Karachi or Bombay hut it is conceivable
that he would seek to do 60 deliberately Just to "show" us and'
to symboliBe Egyptian penetration of the Persian Gulf.
3. Such stops become known a few days ahead and 00 the i*
Committee of National Union can have time to organise a
demonstration. The Government is in effect powerless to stop
such demonstrations, firstly because of the smallness of the
police force and secondly because of the awkwardness of the
airport .layout,.. A determined crowd cannot in fact-be prevented.,
from swarming all over the airport and its buildings and there. /•:
is no easy or practical method of fencing off the buildings •;;;
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D. M. H,. Riohe8, Esq,, .!l ! }
.Esstern^'pepartment,
m<v. Foreign; Office,
LondonS. W. 1.,