To the New York Herald Tribune:

Marguerite Higgins’s Sept. 14 article from Tehran contains such errors of fact as to destroy confidence in its whole argument about the Persian oil dispute.

She says that at the critical period early this year Anglo-Iranian’s “top directors had never even bothered to set foot in this country.” She should have known that such directors had spent months in Tehran and Abadan during the two preceding years; also that some spent most of their working lives in Persia.

She says that the company “continued to resort to traditional methods of bribes and manipulation of local Persian politicians.” This wholly untrue charge, propagated by Dr. Mossadegh’s party without a shred of evidence, has been repeatedly officially denied, and it is astonishing to find it so flatly endorsed by your correspondent.

Her main theme, namely that there was a conspiracy to force Persia’s hand by economic pressure, is pure nonsense in face of the huge money advances continually made to Persia by the company up to April this year and repeatedly offered since. The amount of these advances, £14,000,000 in 1950 and this year at the rate of £25,000,000 per annum up to April, with £3,000,000 monthly offered in June, are well known.

A. CHISHOLM,
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Ltd.
London, Sept. 19, 1951