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Notes to Chapter Nine

99 MEES, vol. XIV, no. 39, 23 July 1971.
100 The advisers of I he Rulers met in August, Shaikh Rashid visited Abu
Dhabi in September, and in October five Emirates, excluding Abu
Dhabi, reached agreement to co-ordinate immigration controls from
Dubai.
101 In November a defence organisation was formed, headed by Colonel F.
de Butts, which was to take over control of the Trucial Oman Scouts on
behalf of the Federation. This force was then 1,700 strong. But because
the Federation had not been proclaimed and no federal decree had been
issued yet, formal handover proved a last minute problem.
102 The island of Abu Musa lies some 35 miles off the Sharjah coast and
about 43 miles off the opposite coast of Iran. In a memorandum sent by
the Ruler of Sharjah to various Arab states on 23 August 1971 it is
claimed that at that lime around 800 persons were living on the island.
There were then some 130 students taught in two schools provided by
Sharjah, which also had a hospital and a police station on the island.
See translation of this memorandum in MEES, vol. XV, no. 6,3 December
1971, pp. 4-8.
103 See also Plass, Jens B., England zwischen Russland und Deutschland.
Der Persische Golf in der britischen Vorkriegspolilik, 1899-1907,
dargestellt nach englischem Archivmaterial. Hamburg, 1966, 410ff. See
also Abdullah, Muhammad M„ The United Arab Emirates, pp. 233ff, for
background on the Iranian claim.
104 See also above Chapter Three, footnote 9.
105 As mentioned above, page 339. See also for the following, ARR, issue 13,
16-30 June 1971 and the interview which the Shah gave to the Guardian,
published on 28 September 1971, when he said “We need them (the
islands); we shall have them; no power on earth shall stop us ... If Abu
Musa and the Tunbs fell into the wrong hands they could be of a great
nuisance value . . . my country has no territorial ambitions. The islands
are a different matter."
106 A complicating factor was a new territorial dispute between Sharjah
and its neighbours over the boundaries of offshore oil concession areas
which had been granted recently. On 10 September 1969 the Ruler of
Sharjah, in line with the governments of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iran,
extended the territorial waters of the emirate from 3 to 12 miles. This
decree did not become generally known until March 1970. On 19
November 1969 the American company Occidental obtained the
offshore concession for Umm al Qaiwain and on 2 February for Ajman.
On 29 December 1969 another American consortium, Buttes Gas and Oil
Company and Clayco Petroleum Consortium, obtained the concession
for Sharjah’s offshore areas, including all of Sharjah's islands and their
territorial waters. The same consortium also obtained a concession
onshore and offshore in Dubai's relinquished areas. After completing
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