Word: suez
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Kenya Crown Colony, ablaze with Mau Mau revolt, is the northernmost bastion of Britain's East African Empire. Should Suez fall to Egyptian nationalism (see below}, the huge British base at Mackinnon Road, 225 miles southeast of Nairobi, supported by its jet airfields, would almost certainly become the key to British strategy in the western Indian Ocean...
Last week, scenting danger to Suez, British Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton flew to Nairobi to see for himself how seriously the Mau Mau terror has jeopardized Kenya's security. He stalked through the ruins of Lari village, where the Mau Mau massacred 300-odd sleeping Kikuyu (TIME, April 6), and later reconnoitered Mau Mau strongholds from a light spotter plane. "We are being outmaneuvered and outflanked," a British officer told...
...Anglo-Egyptian meeting to negotiate the evacuation of Britain's $1.5 billion Suez Canal base was drawing desultorily to a close last week when Lieut. Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt's most powerful man behind Reluctant Dictator Na guib, rose to his full 6 ft. and snapped: "Gentlemen, let us not waste our time." With that, the British delegates crammed papers into portfolios and stalked out; the talks, which had been going on for ten days, were broken off. Egypt vowed it would not move an inch from these points...
Next day London fired back a reply: sorry, but the Suez Canal base is too vital to Middle Eastern and Western defense for the British to clear out unconditionally. Britain will not evacuate unless and until she is sure that in an emergency the base would be operated efficiently for the common good...
...Soldiers." The British first began to catch on to this significant news early last month, at the height of the impasse over Suez Canal negotiations. The British were willing to evacuate the zone only after an Egyptian promise to keep British technicians and join the Western-sponsored Middle East Defense Organization. The Egyptians refused; the deadlock seemed unbreakable. Nasser called in a British correspondent and told him: "What is our policy? It is evacuation-complete independence." Egypt, he said coolly, was not interested in a Middle East Command. But, he went on: "We are soldiers and we are realists...