The Bagdad negotiations of 1910–1911 between Sir Ernest Cassel and Dr. von Gwinner, on the one hand, and the British and Ottoman Governments, on the other, came to naught, it will be recalled, because of the refusal of Sir Edward Grey to consent to an increase in the Turkish customs duties. The Sublime Porte was unwilling to grant the economic concessions demanded by Great Britain as the price of her assistance in Ottoman financial stabilization. But the Young Turks were shrewd enough to keep the door open for further negotiations by removing the chief political objection of England to the Bagdad enterprise—namely, that it menaced British imperial interests in the region of the Persian Gulf. In the convention of March 21, 1911, with the Bagdad Railway Company, the Ottoman Government reserved to itself considerable latitude in the disposition of the sections of the line beyond Bagdad.[20] Conversations were resumed in July, 1911, when the Turkish minister in London solicited of the Foreign Office a further statement of the conditions upon which British objections to the Bagdad Railway might be waived. He was informed that English acquiescence might be forthcoming if the Bagdad-Basra section of the railway were constructed by a company in which British, French, German, Russian, and Turkish capital should share equally; if adequate guarantees were obtained regarding the protection of British imperial interests in southern Mesopotamia and Persia; if English capital were granted important navigation rights on the Shatt-el-Arab, including complete exemption of British ships and British goods from Ottoman tolls; if safeguards were provided against discriminatory and differential tariffs on the Bagdad system. These proposals met with only partial acceptance by the Ottoman Government. Turkey was willing to internationalize the southernmost sections of the Bagdad Railway, but under no circumstances would she permit Russian participation in an enterprise which was so vital to the defence of the Sultan’s Empire. Turkey was prepared to discuss with England measures for the protection of legitimate British interests in the Middle East, provided there be no further infringement on the sovereign rights of the Sultan in southern Mesopotamia. Turkey agreed that the principle of the economic open door should be scrupulously observed throughout the Ottoman Empire; therefore she could not agree to discriminatory treatment in favor of British commerce on the Shatt-el-Arab, the Tigris, and the Euphrates. Upon these conditions the Ottoman minister at London was authorized to continue negotiations in the most friendly spirit.[21]