Page 385 - UAE Truncal States

Chapter Nine

prepared. 3. To permit individual emirates to retain or to acquire
membership of OPEC and OAPEC. 4. To add in Article 122 that the
Union should legislate on the limits of territorial waters on the high
seas. 5. To give the individual Emirates the right to establish armed
forces ready to join the Union forces to repel outside aggression.
6. To require a majority of seven for voting in the Supreme Council on
substantive matters. 7. To require that each emirate should con-
tribute a fixed proportion of its annual revenue with due regard to
the income and number of citizens.
These proposals were presented to the nine emirates during a
second joint Saudi-Kuwaiti mission in April 197187 led by the under­
secretaries in the two countries’ Foreign Ministries. All nine Rulers
accepted the proposals 1. 3 and 4. Qatar opposed point 2 because it
wanted an immediate decision on the location of the capital, point 6
because it still favoured unanimity or at least the qualification that
the big four emirates should be among the seven who agreed, and
point 7 supporting the original clause that each emirate should
contribute 10 per cent of its income from oil without regard to the size
of the population.88 Other emirates disagreed on other points; for
example, Abu Dhabi was reported to be reluctant to merge its 3,500
strong defence force with the federal army.89 Bahrain reiterated on 22
April that it accepted the proposals, but there were reports that
Bahrain was preparing for independence on its own and was seeking
King Faisal’s concurrence to this course by sending a delegation to
Saudi Arabia on 27 April, 1971.
The Conservative Government moves
After Sir William Luce’s third visit to the Gulf between 26 January
and 14 February 1971, the long awaited formal statement of the
Conservative Government’s intentions was made on 1 March. Sir
Alec Douglas-Home told the House of Commons that the British
forces would be withdrawn by the end of December 1971 and that
Britain had offered the Emirates a treaty of friendship.90
The first of the nine Rulers to comment on this decision was
Shaikh Rashid of Dubai, who told The Times quite plainly that he
was disappointed and that he thought that this feeling was almost
certainly shared by most of the other Rulers, although they might not
all wish to express it so clearly. In Shaikh Rashid’s view the
federation had to include Qatar, while he thought that Bahrain
“simply does not want the Union. ’'01 On 11 March the Rulers of
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