Simultaneously, negotiations were being carried on between the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works and the Imperial Ottoman Bank for extensive concessions to the French Syrian Railways, owned and operated by _La Société du Chemin de Fer de Damas-Hama et Prolongements_. Provision was made for the construction of port and terminal facilities at Jaffa, Haifa, and Tripoli-in-Syria; a traffic agreement was negotiated with the Ottoman-owned Hedjaz Railway, pledging both parties to abstain from discriminatory rates and other unfair competition; tentative arrangements were made for the construction of a line from Homs to the Euphrates. Provisional agreements embodying the Black Sea and Syrian railway and port concessions were signed in 1911, but technical difficulties of surveying the lines, together with the political instability occasioned by the Tripolitan and Balkan Wars, postponed the definitive contract.[13] After the Treaty of Bucharest, August 10, 1913, the Ottoman Government was more determined than ever to do everything in its power to eliminate French opposition to railway construction in Asia Minor and to secure French aid in the further economic development of Turkey. Crushing defeats at the hands of the Italians and the Balkan states had emphasized the deficiencies of Ottoman communications, Ottoman economic and military organization, Ottoman financial resources. The national treasury, emptied by the drain of three wars, needed replenishment by an increase in the customs duties, to which French sanction would have to be obtained, and by a foreign loan, for which it was hoped French bankers would submit a favorable bid. All of these questions were so closely associated with the question of political influence in the Near East, however, that it was obviously desirable to arrive at some _modus vivendi_ between French and German interests in Ottoman railways and in Ottoman financial affairs. Accordingly, the Young Turk Government prevailed upon the Imperial Ottoman Bank and the _Deutsche Bank_ to discuss a basis for a Franco-German agreement, and Djavid Bey was despatched to Paris to conduct whatever negotiations might be necessary with the French Government.