Coll 30/33 'Persian Gulf, Trucial Coast. Policy of H.M.G. List of Trucial Sheikhs' [‎124r] (247/818)

granted to the A. I. 0. C. a certain area which we had always re
garded as "being under his sovereignty. The limits 01 this
(a copy of which was attached to the concession)
area were shown on a map/whicn the meeting had oeiore
It was cut of the question to hand over any of this area to
Ibn Saudj who in any case had no claim whatever to it. fore-
over, this would leave within the territory of yatar two
important physical features which are included in tne area ot
the A.I.O.C. concession, vis., the Jebel Naksh, which is the
southern spur of the Jebel Dukhan ana an integral part
geographically of the .star peninsula, and the A1 yalail,
which is described (on page 50) of hr. ihilby f s book "The
Empty Quarter'' 1 'as forming ''the westward face of tne vatar
plateau 1 '. secondly, it was an agreed ;rinciple that Ibn
Baud should not be granted any outlet to the sea to the east
of the Qatar Peninsula. he had no claim to any such outlet,
v/hich he had never possessed, and his Majesty's Government had
already committed themselves to the Sheikh of Adu Dhabi, whose
rights they had recognised over this area; this had been
clearly explained last June to Fuad Bey, who had appeared to
appreciate the position.
SIR A. RYAM entirely agreed that there should be no
question of Ibn Baud being allowed to acquire an outlet to
the sea to the east of the Qatar Peninsula.
Basing himself on these principles, MR. RENDEL suggested
as a tentative basis for aiseussion a new line running some
what as follows:-
(a) Starting from a point on the coast, say, four miles
to the north-east of Qasr-el-Balwa, the line would
run south-easowards to a point (which could be
called key point 'A'), at, say, tne western end
of the salt lake discovered by Mr. Bertram Thomas
and known as the Sabkhat-e1-Amarah. This would
give a small further concession to Ibn Baud in an
area to which he attached great importance, without
at the same time abandoning any tex’ritory to v/hich
the Sheikh of Qatar had a reasOxiable claim. It
would also establish a line parallel to the line
of the A.I.O.C. concession and in comparison with
the so-called ''protection line", would actually be
somewhat more satisfactory from the Air Ministry
point of view. The details could, of course, only
be worked out locally, but generally speaking such
a line would seem to take reasonable account of the
physical and political features of the situation.