'File 61/11 VI (D 102) Hejaz-Nejd Miscellaneous' [‎21r] (58/522)

to modify its attitude in regard to the sovereignty of Ibn Saud over Asir proper,
that is to say, over that territory at least over which the Idrisi exercised his
own sovereignty at the time of the Treaty of Mecca in 1926, and that it would
be ready to elaborate the juridical reasons on which its attitude was based. It
further asserts that there is no question of proposals intended to modify the
conclusions of the conversations of Rome in 1927, which still, according to the
point of view of the British Government, form the basis of the Anglo-Italian
relations in Arabian and Red Sea questions.
The Royal Ministry for Foreign Affairs, while thanking the British
Embassy for its courteous communication, has the honour to inform it that
the Italian Government is grateful to the British Government for having
promptly accepted the Italian proposals for a meeting of experts in Rome.
With regard to the request for explanations made by the British Embassy
as to the proposals and the programme which the Royal Government have in
mind to lay before the projected meeting, the Royal Ministry for Foreign Affairs
has the honour to state that, as the Director-General of Political Affairs had
already had occasion to communicate to the counsellor of the British Embassy on
the 2nd November last, the meetings between the Italian and British experts
should have for object the joint examination, on the basis of the conclusions of
the conversations of Rome in 1927—which, in the opinion of the Royal Govern
ment, also constitute the basis of the Anglo-Italian relations in Arabian and Red
Sea matters—and in the interests of the maintenance of peace in the Arabian
peninsula and of friendly co-operation between the two Governments, of the
events which have since taken place and the situation which has developed in
those regions.
3. It is precisely because the Italian Government completely agrees with the
British Government in holding that the conclusions of the conversations in Rome
should constitute the basis of Anglo-Italian relations in all Arabian and Red Sea
questions, and hence should be the starting-point of the projected meeting of
experts, that the Ministry for Foreign Affairs cannot avoid being rather
preoccupied in regard to the statement contained in the note verhale under reply,
according to which the British Government could not abandon the attitude
assumed by them in regard to the sovereignty of Ibn Saud over Asir.
4. It should, in fact, be remembered that, as the Ministry for Foreign
Affairs has already had occasion to explain in detail to the British Embassy in fts
preceding notes verhales (see, for example, note verhale No. 222751/91 of the
25th June, 1931), the Treaty of Mecca of 1926, by which Ibn Saud set up his own
protectorate over Asir, was the subject of discussion during the conversations at
Rome in 1927; and in regard to it the British delegates, after having demanded
and received instructions from the London Government, declared that the British
Government could not have refused a Hejazi demand for the recognition of the
Treaty of 1926, seeing that it was about to conclude with the Hejaz a Treaty of
Friendship, and a refusal would have compromised the conclusion of this treaty
(the treaty was afterwards concluded in 1927, although the British Government
continued in its non-recognition of the situation created by Ibn Saud in Asir), but
that, in any case, the British representatives, in the name of their Government,
declared that all territorial questions, such as those of Asir, were regarded as an
internal Arabian question and did not interest the London Government.
It is further noted that the record of the Rome conversations expressly
consider Asir as the State existing in the Arabian Peninsula in regard to which
the possibility was foreseen of taking the action contemplated in paragraph 2 of
the conclusions themselves.
5. The statement mentioned in the note of the British Embassy No. 384 of
the 20th November last, according to which the London Government desire to make
it clear even before the opening of the proposed conversations between experts,
that they are not in a position to depart from the attitude adopted by them
regarding the sovereignty of Ibn Saud over Asir, deserves to be explained in
relation to the assurances given in the course of the Rome conversations regarding
British disinterestedness in territorial questions regarded as internal Arabian
questions, if only to give rise in the proposed meeting of experts to a useful
examination of the new situation created by Ibn Saud in Asir, which constitutes
the principal modification of the political situation existing in the Arabian
Peninsula at the time of the Rome conversations of 1927, and forms at present the
principal reason for the existing tension between the Hejaz-Nejd and the Yemen.