Addis Ababa in exchange for relinquishing shares in the Djibouti railway line, 9620 and granting Italy concessions regarding Tunisia and settling the status of the Italian community there. According to one account, he spoke with Mussolini, supporting Italian ambitions; on the condition that, as France supervised Morocco, its supervision of Ethiopia would be based on peace, as he claimed. In another account, Laval promised Mussolini to ensure that if the League of Nations intervened, it would not harm Italy, and that there would be no danger or obstruction to Italy's supplies of oil. Paris began to echo British arguments praising appeasement and denouncing the policy of collective security.

In Stresa, the British Prime Minister MacDonald and his Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon met with Mussolini. They did not discuss the Abyssinian issue with him, which gave the Fascist leader the impression that they did not object to his adventure there. The British stance also gave another impression to observers and historians: that British politicians wanted to appease Mussolini while simultaneously supporting the influence of the League of Nations. This stance became evident during a visit by the Commissioner for League Affairs, Eden, to Rome in June 1935, where he offered the Italians that Britain would grant Ethiopia access to the sea through British Somaliland in exchange for Ethiopia ceding some of its remote territories to Italy, near its borders with its colonies. British policy seemed to outwardly uphold collective security and the League of Nations, but behind the scenes, it was making concessions to Mussolini, who remained steadfast in his positions. The British stance only softened after Baldwin replaced MacDonald as Prime Minister, and under this change, Sir Samuel Hoare became Foreign Secretary instead of Simon. Hoare led the League's adoption of economic sanctions against Italy after the invasion. Despite this, it was clear that both Paris and London were keen on Rome's favor and were dominated by the concern of Mussolini approaching Hitler. Ethiopia was not too high a price to avert this concern. After the Italian military invasion began, economic sanctions were of little effect because they did not include oil. Even then, British and French attempts at negotiation continued, developing Eden's old proposal to make it more generous to Italy by granting them a mandate over the plains they had occupied in the north and east, while the Emperor would retain his kingdom in the highlands. Britain would grant him passage to the port of Zeila in Somaliland. This project, named the "Hoare-Laval Pact," failed after the French press revealed it before it was presented to the League of Nations.