The Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations will examine at its meeting opened here to-day the position in Iraq with regard to the British proposal to give the country independence next year and to admit it to membership of the League of Nations, particularly in respect to the replies given by the British Government to the questions addressed to it by the last meeting of the Mandates Commission concerning the safeguards for the protection of foreigners in the country and of the racial, linguistic and religious minorities, including the Jews.
The discussion will largely turn on the question whether the country has attained a sufficient degree of administration to assure the protection of the rights of these minorities.
The Palestine question is not coming up at this meeting of the Mandates Commission.
Iraq is free and independent and Great Britain our ally has one right in this country and one only – she has the right to use the air route and nothing else, King Feisul declared in a speech which he delivered at a banquet at the Royal Palace in Baghdad at the beginning of this month, on his return from Europe. So important did the King consider this part of this statement that he asked the pressmen present to emphasise these words in large type. Iraq is now a free and independent country, he went on, but we much cultivate feelings of independence. We must depend more on ourselves. We must realise that we are in our own country. We can conclude treaties with our neighbours freely, so long as they do not threaten the interest of our ally. Legally the Mandate still exists, but it will disappear very soon. My policy is to attain our goal – to abolish the Mandate and to become independent.
The question of the status of the Jewish minority in Iraq was raised in the House of Commons in July by Dr. Drummond Shiels, who was at that time Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies in the Labour Government, during a discussion on the sovereignty of Iraq. Sir Samuel Hoare, who is now Minister for India in the National Government, urged that both the British and the Iraq Governments should make declarations before the League of Nations that there should be no discrimination against the three minority Communities, consisting of Kurds, Assyrians and Yezids.
Dr. Drummond Shiels pointed out in his reply that there was another minority in Iraq, the Jews, who number about 88,000 people and are spread all over the country. The Jews of Iraq appeared to be contented and happy, he said, and are fully recognised by the Arabs and the general population wherever they live. I think that it is of some significance, he added, that whereas in countries where the Jews are badly treated there is a great desire to go to Palestine, there has been no evidence at all of any desire among the Jews of Iraq to go from Iraq to Palestine. That, he said, is another illustration of the obvious tolerance of the Iraq people.
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