Page 368 - UAE Truncal States

The Formation of the Federation

The first federation meeting
When the nine Rulers gathered in Dubai in February 1968 they
probably supposed that it would be a preliminary meeting to sound
out the possibility of forming a federation of their nine Emirates. But
the Government of Qatar had already prepared the draft of an
agreement for the creation of a federation there and then.10 This draft
formed the basis of the discussions between the nine delegations,
and much of the original text became in the event the text of the first
agreement between the nine.
The most noticeable difference between the Qatari draft proposal
and the agreement was that the number of participants was not
reduced, as proposed by Qatar. The draft had envisaged that the five
small shaikhdoms (Sharjah, 'Ajman, Umm al Qaiwain, Fujairah and
Ra’s al Khaimah) should establish a union among themselves, to be
known as the United Arab Coastal Emirates, in which each of the five
shaikhdoms would be a province, ruled by a governor, namely its
Ruler, while the presidency of this new Emirate would rotate among
the five governors.17 This construction would have cut the number of
member Stales of the anticipated federation from nine to five, which
would have been more nearly equal in terms of population and
economic resources. However, the idea of signing away their
sovereign rights was totally unacceptable to the five Rulers con­
cerned and was also rejected by the rest as being unworkable.
The meeting in Dubai of the nine Rulers with a number of relatives,
advisers and retainers in attendance, lasted from 25 to 27 February
1968. Much to the surprise of some of the participants, who might
have expected a rather vague declaration to “strengthen brotherly
ties" and of the intention to look into the possibility of forming a
union, the draft constitution on the table compelled them to
concentrate their minds on the practicalities of creating a federal
Stale. A great deal of the bargaining was between the expatriate
Arab advisers of the Governments of Qatar and Abu Dhabi. The nine
Rulers finally signed a version of the agreement which differed in a
number of points from the original draft.18
The draft deals in two places with procedures for settling disputes
among the member States, but both references were dropped in the
final version to avoid reference to such disputes and to assume a
sense of cohesion from the outset.
The agreement of February 1968 was inadequate as an instrument
for welding the nine shaikhdoms into a political organism function-

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