Coll 6/19 'Arabia: (Saudi Arabia) Hejaz-Nejd Annual Report.' [‎246v] (493/540)

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permission was given, and Sir A. Ryan wrote a letter which elicited a personal
reply from the King, dated the 26th September. He agreed that any resentment
he had against Colonel Biscoe might be regarded as washed away, but made it
clear that he conceived himself to be forgiving an injury rather than accepting
an explanation. The Arab character, he explained, did not admit of rancour,
and no one’s action could affect his good relations with His Majesty’s Govern-
ment. He had no objection to meeting the Resident, but his impending journey
to Nejd was to be for a change of air and of short duration. Should the British
Government wish to employ Colonel Biscoe, he would either send a delegation to
negotiate with him in the Gulf, or he would engage in negotiations (he did not
say in person) if Colonel Biscoe or anyone else were sent to Jedda. The King
blandly added that he knew of no important matters relating to Kowait, although
Sir A. Ryan had stated in his own personal letter what the two matters were.
The most important matters, the King explained, were those connected with the
commercial interests of his subjects as regarded Bahrain. He had written to his
brother, Sheikh Hamad. If the British Government wished to negotiate in either
of the two ways he had suggested, he was ready.
57. The Indian authorities were averse from treating with a delegation,
which they feared would have no authority. They were still eager that Colonel
Biscoe should negotiate and should negotiate with Ibn Saud himself. The King’s
letter might have been taken as closing the personal incident between them, but it
was clear from various sources of information that His Majesty was far from
being appeased. After further consultations, including a midnight discussion
with the Hejazi Minister in London at a club in St. James’s Street, it was decided
to make a further attempt to restore really good relations by engineering a
personal visit by Colonel Biscoe to the King, when the latter went to Nejd.
Various views were held as to the character which should he given to this visit,
i.e., whether it should be in the nature of a mission in which the Sheikh of Kowait
might take part or should be a visit of courtesy and respects. It was eventually
decided to ask Ibn Saud to receive a visit of the latter kind at Riadh or elsewhere
m Nejd and to leave it to him to decide whether matters of business should be
touched on, not by way of for al negotiations but by way of prelude. Letters
embodying this proposal were despatched to Mecca on the 28th December, but the
King had left for Riadh a week earlier and it was doubtful whether the proposal
would reach him in time for the visit to be arranged, even if he were, in principle,
willing to receive it.
58. The upshot, at the end of December, of this tangled tale may be summed
up as follows :—
(1) Ibn Saud was throughout keen on his own desiderata, which related
mainly to Bahrain, but he never defined them in detail and he allowed
his pique to stand in the w r ay of discussion on the lines on which His
Majesty's Government were willing to discuss them. He made
something of a scoop by bringing off this visit to Bahrain in February,
but he sustained a rebuff later when he asked in vain for a remission
of the 2 per cent, transit duty on rice which he was importing for his
troops.
(2; His Majesty s Government in the United Kingdom, after prolonged
consideration, reduced their points for discussion in connexion with
Kowait to two, namely, the customs question and the conclusion of a
quasi-Bahra Agreement, but their proposal that Colonel Biscoe should
negotiate these two questions was never submitted to Ibn Saud other
wise than in the personal letter written to the King in August, in
wdnch it was brought in as a pendant to the main subject and as a
proposal which His Majesty’s Government intended to broach in due
course.
(3) Despite His Majesty’s Government’s decision in July to pursue the two
Kowait questions, the Government of India did not apparently attach
so much importance to them as to think that His Majesty’s Govern
ment should take the initiative. They suggested that “it would
be better tactics to let the other side come forward with proposals for
negotiation if the King’s Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. desiderata are of sufficient
weight to compel him to do so.’’ This pronouncement seemed to