مجموعة ٦ / ٦٧ (٦) "حدود جنوب شرق الجزيرة العربية وقطر: امتيازات النفط في الساحل المتصالح" [و‎‎١‎٩‎٣] (٤٠٢/٣٩٦)

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DiokKm’s^etter^o 13 ^ n® B- 0n T oontained in Paragraph 6 of Colonel
A ^“ 17 of the 18th January, 1934, to the Political Resident
and m the enclosure therein, where it is observed that the Sheikh of Qatar “ has
Qatari^deDends^fn^b - C H' 11 ? , as own ' n Qatar■ ■ ■ • Ibn Thani thTsheikh of
^ Bini Mnrra Twn f fh fn g men draWn fr0m the Bini Ha i ar and
I ' thirdtTbe is rManasfr- ree 68 PaStUrmg al ° ng the b ° rder of ( '> atar '
31 To sum up it may be that the Saudi Arabian Government do not
administer the Jebel Nakhsh, even though they may say they do and even though
the tribes of the area pay them tribute as a means of securing themselves against
raids by tnbes under effective Saudi control. But neither does, for that matter,
me bneikn 01 Qatar, and since this territory is directly ruled by nobody the most
logical course might be, were it not for extraneous commitments, to attribute it
to the Power to whom the local tribes recognise their allegiance. Indeed from
the evidence at present available it seems that the Sheikh of Qatar exercises
little if any, authority over most of the Qatar peninsula, let alone Jebel Nakhsh.
furthermore, the boundaries of his State were never clearly defined until,Nn
1935, they were shown in the Qatar oil concession agreement to be the same as
the limits of the area of the concession itself.
32. In these circumstances, it is difficult to rebut an argument to the effect
that much of what has been regarded and recognised as Qatar territory is
res nullius, as defined by Mr. Beckett in his minute of the 29th August, 1934,
since the Sheikh of Qatar exercises no control over it and has no demonstrably
valid claim to it, and that the Sheikh was exceeding his rights in including the
Jebel Nakhsh or any other part of such territory in the area of the 1935
concession. The argument is strengthened by the consideration, which has already
been discussed, that the position of local tribal chiefs exercising no established
rule is fundamentally different from that of the rulers of recognised States
whose independence is commonly recognised or guaranteed by His Majesty’s
Government, and that in the case of the former the payment of tribute may
legitimately be taken as a factor determining their allegiance to any particular
ruler and consequently establishing their political status. If on this basis it can
be shown that the local tribes owe allegiance to Ibn Sand, as appears to be the
case, the latter may well consider himself fully justified in claiming the territory
in question for Saudi Arabia.
E. 1513/81/
91 (1934).
(H )—The Saudi claim to territory otherwise claimed for A bu Dhabi, Muscat
and the Aden Protectorate.
33. The Saudi Arabian claim to territory in South-Eastern Arabia
formulated in 1934 is not limited to the Khor-el-Odeid and the Jebel Nakhsh,
but also extends to territory otherwise claimed by the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi, the
Sultan of Muscat, and certain rulers or tribes, of whom the most important is
the Sultan of Shihr and Mokalla, in the Aden Protectorate. These claims
appear, however, to be of less importance in Saudi eyes than the claims to the
Khor-el-Odeid and the Jebel Nakhsh, and only require brief notice, particularly
as the arguments advanced by Ibn Saud and the counter-arguments of His
Majesty’s Government do not differ materially from those employed by the two
parties over the two principal claims.
34. With regard to territory claimed by Saudi Arabia, but belonging, if it
belongs to anybody, to the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi, most of what has been said
concerning the claim to the Khor-el-Odeid also applies to the claim to territory
further south and east. The Saudi claim is based on histoiical arguments and
on tribal allegiances, and His Majesty’s Government’s counter-argument is based
mainly on Article 6 of the Treaty of Jedda, whereby the Saudi Arabian Govein-
ment undertook to recognise the special treaty relations existing between His
Majesty’s Government and the Trucial Sheikhs.
35' In 1937 the question arose of determining the western frontiers of the
territory of the Sultan of Muscat, so as to ensure that no offer made to Ibn Saud
should unwittingly impinge on these frontiers. In spite of his suspicion and an
ingrained unwillingness to formulate his claims with precision, the Sultan was
finally persuaded to put forward a statement of the limits of the territory which
he believed to belong to him. He stated that he would have no objection if the