As early as 1902, Herzl's negotiations with the Ottoman Empire for a Jewish homeland in Palestine had proven so futile and the dream of Zion so distant that he decided to approach the British about the creation of a Jewish colony in Africa. And in April 1903 his efforts in London seemed to bear fruit. In response to the horrors of Kishinev, England's Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain proposed to Herzl the creation a semiautonomous region on the Uasin Gishu plateau in British East Africa for Jewish settlement. When Herzl revealed Chamberlain's offer to the Sixth Zionist Congress in August 1903, Israel Zangwill spoke in favor of the proposal. In his speech to the Congress Zangwill made clear that, though he did not see East Africa as the ultimate consummation of the Zionist cause, he did believe that it proved a particularly useful, temporary (if still somewhat long-term) solution to the Jewish problem in Russia.