Page 76 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The Retreat from the Gulf 13

Shaikh Yusuf Yasin - who was also Saudi Arabia’s representative on the inter­

national arbitration tribunal. Much of the bribery and some of the other louche
activities had as their object the manufacture of evidence for incorporation in
the memorial which the Saudi government intended to submit to the tribunal
in support of its case. Although the memorial was compiled in the main by

American advisers not wholly unconnected with the Arabian research division
of ARAMCO, the Saudis were uneasy about entrusting their chances of
success solely to the skill and inventiveness of their advisers. So in Geneva in
September 1955 they took the logical step of trying to bribe two of the members
of the tribunal itself. At this the British member resigned, and his example was
followed by the tribunal’s president, a distinguished Belgian jurist and former

judge of the International Court of Justice. A month later, on 26 October, the
British government informed the Saudi government that it considered the
arbitration to have been wrecked by the Saudis’ behaviour. Henceforth, it
added, it would regard the Riyad Line of 1935, subject to a couple of minor

modifications, as the frontier between Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. That
same day Abu Dhabi and Omani tribesmen, supported by the Trucial Oman
Levies, expelled the Saudi police force from the Buraimi oasis. A substantial
sum of money found in the police post was returned to the Saudi government
with the comment that, as it seemed an unduly large amount for the upkeep of
fifteen men, it could only have been intended for illicit purposes. The Saudis

accepted the money but rejected the accusation. ‘It is not part of the traditions
of the Saudi Arabian government’, they asserted, ‘to make colonies of nations,
whether by force or by buying their loyalties with bribes.’
A year later, at the time of the Suez crisis, the Saudis broke off diplomatic
relations with Britain. They offered several times in the next few years to

reopen relations in exchange for a substantial concession on the frontier issue.
Each time they were told that this was not possible. ‘We cannot consider
“buying back” ... our diplomatic relations’, the Foreign Office stated publicly
in July 1959, ‘by making concessions at other people’s expense.’ Diplomatic
relations were eventually resumed in January 1963, when it was agreed to
resume discussion of the Buraimi question under the supervision of the UN

secretary-general, acting in his personal capacity. Little progress was made,
not least because the Saudis kept insisting, as they had since October 1955, that
the arbitration was still in force. Oil had been discovered in Abu Dhabi
territory in i960 - the Murban field in the northern quarter of the Dhafrah -

and production began a couple of years later. It had the effect of intensifying
the Saudi government’s protests, which had been going on at intervals since
1955, against the operations of the Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company (as the Abu
Dhabi division of the IPC subsidiary, Petroleum Concessions Limited,
was now called), on the grounds that ADPC was violating Saudi territory,
appropriating Saudi oil and contravening the arbitration agreement of