Coll 28/28A ‘Persia: Perso-Baluchistan frontier; demarcation near Mirjawa [mostly copies of papers on 28/28]’ [‎232r] (463/572)

a
T~< ^ ^ yC J 1
<rY
)dW
L riiis Document is the Property oi His Bntanmc iyiajest^ ^ GQveiiim tnt.j
C 1 /<,i£ /" r
[June 12.]
SlCTlOK 1.
\ k •<-. 1 <
JZtyt
h*«A
Sir A. Hardinge to the Marquess of Lansdowne.—[Received June 12.^ 3 0 £j[ L>
fro. 112.) ,. . .... k -
^Iv Lord/ Tehran, May 21, 190u.
‘ I HAVE the honour to report, with reference to my despatch No/102 of the loth
instant that the Mushir-ed-Dowleh has been informed, in reply to a telegraphic inquiry
addressed to the Director-General of Customs in Seistan, that Padaha is, according to
the Holdich Agreement, in Persian territor}*. His Excellency was at first a good deal
disturbed by this discovery; at an evening party two days ago at the Turkish Embassy
he took me aside and rather reproachfully implied that T had tricked him, saying that
he would be held responsible for the recognition of Padaha as British in the Protocol of
the 13th instant. He also sent for M. Nans, who reluctantly quitted a game of bridge,
and asked him if it was really the case that Padaha belonged or ought to belong to
Persia. If it did, and this was proved by the map which Colonel MacMahon had
promised me, could not the arrangement we had just signed be altered.
I explained, and so did M. Xaus, that the positions both of Mirjawar and of the
British post at Padaha in relation to the Holdich boundary could only accurately lie
verified by the delimitation on the ground itself, which both Governments had agreed
in the Protocol of the 13th May to abandon. The boundary in question was an
unknown line between two as yet unascertained points, viz., the junction of the so-called
Talab and Mirjawar Rivers, and the nearest point (in a straight hue running from that
inaction) on the Mirjawar watershed. It was conceivable that an accurate survey of this
line might show Mirjawar to be just within British or Padaha just within Persian
territory but the object of the Agreement which the Shah had ordered Ins Excellency
to sign was to obviate the necessity of laborious inquiries into a question which was of
no practical importance to either Government and to settle it on the basis of uii
vossidetis. M. Naus observed that he thought it probable from our maps that 1 adaha
was in Persian territory and certain that Mirjawar was not; but he admitted that the
maos on which his conjecture was based were unreliable 1 he Mushir-ed-Dowleh, who
reverted to the subject at an interview yesterday, is, I believe, a httle reassured by the
explanations which have been given him, but I am inclined to think that it will be
better not to propose any formal exchange of ratifications (even if such a course should
be technically more correct) which would give the Persians any loophole for reopening
'The excessive sensitiveness displayed by the Mushir-ed-Dowleh, who in thi>
reflects the views of the Shah, as to the possible alienation even of an acre of waterless
desert (for he knows that Padaha has to get its water from Mirjawar) demonstrates, 1
venture to think, how impossible it would have been for me to induce the Persian
Government to agree to Colonel MacMahou’s red line. One reason for this temper
G of course the knowledge that Russia will exact compensation m the north for any
slieht rectification made in our favour in the south-east. There is s ill a small strip of
disputed boundary in Azerbaijan, in the celebrated plain of Mogau (where the election
f V-ullr ‘stvih as King of Persia was ratified by the army and people), and the Einpeior
o! Rifssia consenS on the occasion of his last, interview with the Shah to let this
Question remain for the present open. The Mirjawar affair, as jour Lordship knows,
ha, een attentively watched by the Russians, and I think it very probable that the
acceptance by Persia of the red line would have been the signal for revived clauns by
plL in the more valuable Mogan district. The Persians.a
Russia in the more valuable .uogan uisirici. me ‘ ., at
and would undoubtedly have obstinately insisted on the strict
boundary.
for revived claims
any rate believe this
letter of the Holdich
I have, Ac.
(Signed) ARTHUR
H. HARDINGE.
[2030 w—1]