Page 503 - Truncal States to UAE_Neat

Notes to Chapter Nine
obtained, allowing a two-thirds majority vote, taken at a subsequent
meeting about the same subject, to be binding—was approved only by
Sharjah, Fujairah and Abu Dhabi. Bahrain again reserved its opinion.
The committee settled for unanimity to be the method of voting in the
Supreme Council of Rulers (see p. 65 of the Minutes in Resolutions).
The next point was the approval by eight members of the provision
regarding the capital, i.e. that Abu Dhabi should be the temporary seal
and that the permanent capital should be built on the border between
Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Bahrain again abstained. A motion by Dubai
requesting that the individual Emirates should be allowed to deal with
all aviation matters which did not explicitly fall within the executive
power of the Union was also approved by eight delegations while
Bahrain abstained. The budget committee’s recommendation, that each
member emirate should contribute 10 per cent of its revenues from oil
and that the budget for the first year should be 19 million Bahraini
Dinars, was adopted while Bahrain again refused to discuss the matter
(see p. 71-74 of the Minutes in Resolutions); the same pattern was
repeated regarding the draft agenda for the Supreme Council meeting.
79 Sir William Luce, the special envoy of the new' British Government, had
from the outset of his mission tried to combine the re-appraisal of its
Gulf policy with assisting the Federation members to sort out their
constitutional disagreements. At this point he suggested in his informal
talks with the legal advisers about the dispute over representation that
a suitable compromise was the already familiar proposal to give six
seats to some of the big Emirates and four and three seats respectively to
the smaller ones. The five small Emirates resented the fact that Qatar,
Dubai, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi agreed to this solution without
consulting them and voted against it in the October meeting of Deputy
Rulers. The same fate was met by the idea, discussed between Sir
William Luce and the four, to give some form of veto to the big Emirates
in certain decisions of the Supreme Council.
80 ARR, issue 24, 15-31 December 1970.
81 After 14 November 1970 a battalion of the Scots Guards prepared to
leave Sharjah without being replaced.
82 Daily Telegraph of 16 December 1970.
83 Eventually relations between the neighbours cooled because of border
disputes.
84 On 18 November 1970 the Ruler of Qatar sent a letter to the Ruler of Abu
Dhabi who was the current President of the Supreme Council; he
accused Bahrain of being disruptive by changing its mind on certain
issues which had already been agreed. He asked Shaikh Zayid to
prevail upon our sister, Bahrain, to change its attitude” and implied that
he would work for a solution without Bahrain if need be; see
Resolutions.

477