You will, I expect, have received my telegram of July 19th
regarding Oil Search's application for the concession in Timor.

[1]

It must be very hard both for Your Excellency's Government and for
the company to understand the cause for all the delay in settling
this matter and still harder to appreciate why Mr Dodson [2] can
make no progress. May I say that I think Mr Dodson has shown
admirable patience and restraint in most trying circumstances and
that so far as I can see he has omitted no step which might have
secured an earlier decision.

The position as I understand it at the present is that all the
material obstacles have been overcome. The rival claimant, Mr
Wittouck [3], has, I believe, been eliminated and departmental
approval of Oil Search's application has been given. In this
country, however, there is a great distaste for accepting
responsibility and though the Minister for the Colonies [4] has
had ample opportunities for taking a decision, he went away to
Africa with the President of the Republic [5] without having done
so, leaving authority to his substitute to settle the matter.

A new complication arose a few days ago when, if my information is
correct, Dr Salazar [6] refused to accept certain recommendations
of the Acting Minister for the Colonies in other matters and the
latter, taking offence, adopted the attitude that he would submit
no more questions to Dr Salazar during his interim tenure of
office and would confine himself to the purely routine work of his
department. There is one further complication, namely the friction
that exists chronically between the Ministry for Foreign Affairs
and the Ministry of the Colonies. I am doing what I can to
persuade the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
[7] to bring pressure to bear on his colleagues at the Ministry of
the Colonies and I hope to see him again tomorrow or perhaps
today.

I hope the foregoing may make it easier for you to realise the
exact position and if Your Excellency feels disposed to send me
any further instructions emphasising the political or strategical
interests of the Australian Government in securing an early and
favourable conclusion of this matter I shall be pleased to receive
them and they may serve to strengthen my hand when talking to the
Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

OSWALD SCOTT