For a period of twenty years, the existing Turkish tariff remains in effect in all blue and red zones as well as in zones (a) and b) and there is no increase in tariffs or conversions of value at certain rates, unless agreed between the two powers. On 18 September Faisal met in London and the next day and 23 had long meetings with Lloyd George, who explained the memory aid and the British position. Lloyd George stated that he was “in the position of a man who had inherited two groups of commitments, those of King Hussein and those of the French,” Faisal noted that the agreement “seemed to be based on the 1916 agreement between the British and the French.” Clemenceau responded about Memory Aid, refusing to travel to Syria and saying that the case should be left to the French to directly manage Fayçal. After confronting the desiderata of all parties concerned – the British, the French and the Arabs – the two statesmen devised a compromise solution. The terms of the division agreement were set out in a letter of 9 May 1916 addressed by Paul Cambon, French Ambassador to London, to Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Minister. These conditions were ratified on 16 May in a letter of Grey`s return to Cambon, and the agreement was formalized on 26 April and 23 May 1916 in an exchange of notes between the three Allied powers. The agreement gave a general understanding of the British and French spheres of influence in the Middle East. The aim was to divide the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire (excluding the Arabian Peninsula). Under the agreement, France should exercise direct control over cilicia, the coastal strip of Syria, Lebanon and most of Galilee, up to the line that stretches from northern Acre to the northwest corner of Lake Galilee (“blue zone”). To the east, in the Syrian hinterland, an Arab state (“Area A”) should be created under the protection of France. Britain should exercise control of southern Mesopotamia (“red zone”) and the area around the acre-Haifa bay in the Mediterranean, with right rights to build a railway from there to Baghdad. The area east of the Jordan River and the Negev desert south of the road, which stretches from Gaza to the Dead Sea, has been attributed to an Arab state under the protection of the United Kingdom (“Area B”).