Coll 6/67(6) 'Boundaries of South-Eastern Arabia and Qatar: Trucial Coast Oil Concessions' [‎194v] (399/402)

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that Ibn Saud has in fact * extent 0 f authority Ibn sLd has
I am not attempting to advise now whet ft title b occupation or prescrip-
exercised up to this date is '2 b rs which will produce this result in time,
sovereignty of Ibn Sand against His Majesty’s Government when
8. The second part of thf resen ts to-day the limits of Ibn Saud's
they seek to maintain that the h h P ld kim as successor to Turkey) is
dominions (as opposed to those vhicn nc j jons with him in 1915 , 1922
based TP on ^ST’b^i states! till the agreements of 1915 and 1927
aouear to proceed upon the basfs that Ibn Baud’s territories and those of the
Shefkh of Qatar. &c. are co-terminous, i.e., that cotu’Te
jo cpprvio f G me to be an argument which cuts notn ways, tnougn i cou se
i"d*s dispose of any case built up on a ^| h rof Gator^BuffroTtoe
to territory belonging to the dominions of the Sheikh of Qatar, but hom the
W al point of view, the sphere of influence argument was clearly hopeless in any
case and any substantial use of it seems to be merely an admission of weakness
on our part and a virtual giving away o f any legal case that we may have, it
is, of course, an argument against His Majesty s (jovernment that in negotiating
the 1915 agreement no mention whatever is made of the blue iine. It is not by any
means conclusive, because the agreement of 1915 proceeds on the tooting that the
boundaries of Ibn Sand on one hand and Qatar on the other are all to be
delimited by agreement. The most that can be said is that the 1915 agreement
appears to proceed on the assumption that in the future delimitation by agree
ment the criterion should be the areas over which Ibn Saud and his predecessors
and the Sheikh of Qatar, &c., possessed in the past, and this rather suggests that
we did not think the blue line agreement with Turkey was necessarily to be
relevant. This is, of course, not conclusive, because it may well be that Ibn Saud
and his predecessors could not really establish claims on past history to territory
crossing the blue line or even coming anywhere near it, and wm would not put the
blue line into the agreement because we were not then prepared to admit that he
could establish a claim that even went as far as this. I doubt very much if the
1927 treaty carries the matter any further. The 1922 agreement^ relates to am
area which is so far distant from the blue line that it can hardly be said to be
directly relevant at all. The most that can be said about it is that the frontier
with Koweit there agreed upon is quite different from that laid down in the
treaty with Turkey of 1913 and once again the arrangements w T ith Turkey do
not appear to have oeen taken as the basis for fixing the new frontiers. The
aigument alone is not, I think, very conclusive, but is, of course, a straw which
acquires some force when added to other indications of the same kind More
nearly relevant are the lines drawn by Sir Percy Cox in 1922 at liqair actually
m the areas concerned (E. 1512, para. 4 of the India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. memorandum)
limifs wTw d l? W a im ? mdl a Ca i mg what he cons >dered then to be Ibn Saud’s
limits, which follows quite a different course from the blue line and this is
nofikS bfklffie fn ^ that th t 1915 agreement with ibn Saud did
Plated by ttta^re^ent w^ toking^piat" ^ deW * tion
justified^i^t^bkfltae^nT^r^ion 8 f T t , hat ;, wh . ile we are PM'fectly
Turkey, &c„ as much as we“n m nekS with Th | aud , aS a j^cessor of
the most acceptable frontier possible" in wording Saud ln order to secure
think we should win before a tribunal deridi i ,^t, fUU,re a o reeme nts, I do not
if the issue was whether the area immedioteh- ° B lhe 1 ? a i ter , , on le g al principles,
of the territory of the Sheikh of Oatai 1 Wk f ° f the blue liM was a part
it was res nullim .whether Ibn Saud was free tTie P ' 0te t ted '.P r, “«Pality, or. if
or prescription, if he could produce evidence of th?«ff l<! 7 lt 2 r ? by 0 CCU P all °n
innrt ennt Q mm™ ^ - l ' 1 l state of aftairs necessary to
support such a claim.
August 29, 1934.
W. E. BECKETT.