Samuel replied to Curzon, "After the fall of Damascus a fortnight ago ... Sheiks and tribes east of Jordan utterly dissatisfied with Shareefian Government most unlikely would accept revival", and asked to put parts of Transjordan directly under his administrative control. Two weeks later, on 21 August, Samuel visited Transjordan without authorisation from London; at a meeting with 600 leaders in Salt, he announced the independence of the area from Damascus and its absorption into the mandate (proposing to quadruple the area under his control by tacit capitulation). Samuel assured his audience that Transjordan would not be merged with Palestine. Curzon was in the process of reducing British military expenditures, and was unwilling to commit significant resources to an area considered of marginal strategic value. He immediately repudiated Samuel's action, and sent (via the Foreign Office) a reiteration of his instructions to minimize the scope of British involvement in the area: "There must be no question of setting up any British administration in that area". At the end of September 1920, Curzon instructed an Assistant Secretary at the Foreign Office, Robert Vansittart, to leave the eastern boundary of Palestine undefined and avoid "any definite connection" between Transjordan and Palestine to leave the way open for an Arab government in Transjordan. Curzon subsequently wrote in February 1921, "I am very concerned about Transjordania ... Sir H.Samuel wants it as an annex of Palestine and an outlet for the Jews. Here I am against him." Abdullah, the brother of recently deposed King Faisal, marched into Ma'an at the head of an army of from 300 to 2,000 men on 21 November 1920. Between then and the end of March 1921, Abdullah's army occupied all of Transjordan with some local support and no British opposition. The Cairo Conference was convened on 12 March 1921 by Winston Churchill, then Britain's Colonial Secretary, and lasted until 30 March. It was intended to endorse an arrangement whereby Transjordan would be added to the Palestine mandate, with Abdullah as the emir under the authority of the High Commissioner, and with the condition that the Jewish National Home provisions of the Palestine mandate would not apply there. On the first day of the conference, the Middle East Department of the Colonial Office set out the situation of Transjordan in a memorandum. On 21 March 1921, the Foreign and Colonial Office legal advisers decided to introduce Article 25 into the Palestine Mandate to allow for Transjordan "its inclusion within the boundaries of Palestine".