§ SIR CHARLES DILKE (Gloucester, Forest of Dean)I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1) whether it is the case, as recently stated by M. Richard Waddington in the French Senate, with the apparent assent of the Minister of the Colonies, that French troops under Lieutenant Liotard now occupy a portion of the Bahr-el-Ghazel, and have probably by this time reached the Nile; and (2) whether Egypt continues to assert her right to the territory thus 1075 crossed by a French military expedition, which was the subject of lease by the Earl of Kimberley to the Congo State, and from which the Congo State officers were withdrawn upon representations to that State by France?
§ * THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. G. CURZON, Lancashire, Southport)We have so far received no confirmation of the statement referred to in the first paragraph of the Question. The Egyptian Government has not relinquished any of its claims to territory in the basin of the Upper Nile.