§ MR. HARWOOD (Bolton)To ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if any consideration is being given to the advisability of making the Suakim-Berber Railway in the interest of Trade in the Soudan generally, and particularly to encourage the growth of cotton.
(Answered by Lord Cranborne.) It will be seen on reference to Lord Cromer's Reports on Egypt and the Soudan (Egypt, No. 1, 1903, pp. 15, 73, and 94–96), that the most attentive consideration has been given to the advisability of making a railway from 140 Berber to Suakim, and that the Egyptian authorities are fully alive to its importance in the interests of commerce generally and of the cotton trade in particular. In a despatch just received, Lord Cromer reports that notwithstanding many financial and engineering difficulties substantial progress has been made with the necessary preliminaries, and that when the work is commenced, which will soon be the case, it will be pushed forward as rapidly as possible.