Mr.Weil, accompanied by Mr. Thomas Brown, proposes to fly to Kabul from Tehran in June with the hope of concluding a satisfactory agreement. 5. Mr. Weil has just returned from a visit to Baghdad. His object was to study local conditions and to approach the authorities on the question of Junkers Company establishing an air service from Baghdad to Damascus (Aleppo-Haifa) and Baghdad to the Hedjaz. He had interview with King Feisal and the High Commissioner to whom he only mentioned the question of the Baghdad - Damascus line. He considered it unsound, on political grounds, to mention the Hejaz line as he visualizes an Arab state, or states, centred on Baghdad - Damascus - Mecca, linked by Junkers air service, and he was uncertain whether this vision would appeal to the Iraq authorities. During his stay in Baghdad Mr. Weil made preliminary arrangements for establishing a local company to be called the Iraq Transport Company. Junkers take 51% of the shares, the public 25%, and the remainder will be offered to the British. With an eye to the future it is being arranged as far as possible that the public shares will be offered to Iraqis of every creed so that a political upheaval will not necessarily ruin the Company. Mr. Nairn and other transport agents in Iraq and Syria appear to have taken great interest in the new Iraq Transport Company. Mr. Weil is quite certain that Junkers aircraft, type U52 can compete successfully with any form of ground transport for goods or passengers in a desert service. 6. Mr. Weil asked regarding an experimental flight from N. India over the Karakoram range to Chinese Turkestan. He understood that a Colonel Stewart was undertaking this flight in a Victrix machine. I had no information and Mr. Weil went on to say that the Germans had for a long time wanted to establish a line from Baghdad to India via Persia - Afghanistan and on to China over the Karakoram range via Chinese Turkestan. This scheme he has often mentioned to me before. (Sd.) Lt.-Colonel, Military Attaché.” Extract from Bushire Residency and Consulate General Persian Diary No. 5, for the month of May 1931: “65. Aviation. Dutch. Imperial Dutch air mail calls at Bushire twice a month, once on its way out and again on its return. German. The Bi-weekly service has given place to a weekly service. The mail arrives at Bushire on Sunday and leaves next day for Tehran.” Coll 30/5 'Persian Gulf. Diaries: Bushire Residency (Persian), Jany. 1931 - Dec. 1940' [644v] (1288/1320) | Qatar Digital Library (qdl.qa) 4 June 1931 Extract from telegram from Government of India to Secretary of State for India: “We have received information of the Government's proposals for Imperial Airways route through the interior of Persia. This route passes through Ispahan, Yezd and Kerman to Gwattar on the south coast of Persia lying to the west of Gwadur, and would not affect prohibited areas of either the North West Frontier Province or Baluchistan. But it is thought that objections to this route may be raised on point of altitude or nature of the country, and any willingness on the part of the Government of India to contemplate operation of the route farther north as difficult as, if not more difficult, than the route proposed by the Persian Government, may weaken the force of any objection to it raised by His Majesty's Government.
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