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more British staff to ensure greater efficiency. In concluding the meeting, Gault said

that he assumed that ‘the Adviser realises now that things are serious here’. 277

Eden was due to meet for the first and last time his future nemesis, Egypt’s

leader Colonel Nasser, in Cairo on 20 February. The visit was part of his trip to

attend SEATO’s first council meeting due to be held in Bangkok. At the time the

Alpha Plan was alive and continued to seek to ‘cast Colonel Nasser in a leading role’,

working towards a long-standing settlement with the Israelis. It was up to the

Foreign Secretary in his short visit to Cairo to play his part in encouraging the

Egyptians to work towards a resolution without seeming to impose his will on the

issue. A list of arguments and counter arguments were created for Eden to confront

Nasser with. 278

Upon Eden’s arrival a dinner was organised with Nasser at the British

Embassy in Cairo. The topic of an Arab-Israeli settlement was brought up.

According to Eden, the Egyptian leader was not ‘entirely negative on the question’

but had ‘emphasised the importance of timing and the need for a comprehensive

settlement’. However the main topic of dispute raised was regarding Iraq’s new

alliance with Turkey. Nasser stated his objection of the Pact between the two states

as it ‘had seriously set back the development of effective collaboration with the

West by the Arab States’. Eden believed that the Egyptian leader’s hostility to the

Turco-Iraqi Pact was due to jealousy ‘and a frustrated desire to lead the Arab

277 TNA, FO 1016/386, Gault’s Minutes with Belgrave, 19 February 1955.
278 TNA, FO 371/115865, Ralph Stevenson’s Brief for the Secretary of State’s Visit to Cairo, 15
February 1955.

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