Page 81 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

78 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

Riyad Line, would be firmly upheld by the Foreign Office, especially as

whatever Faisal might pretend, Saudi Arabia had never exercised the slightest
particle of jurisdiction in the area.
The Foreign Office, however, equivocated, and in the absence of an
unqualified expression of support Zayid informed Faisal on 18 May, at the end
of the fortnight’s grace which the latter had given him, that drilling had ceased
on the well site on the Zarrara structure closest to the Riyad Line. Dissatisfied

with this reply, Faisal peremptorily demanded the immediate cessation of any
and all drilling in the Zarrara field. Zayid replied on 2 June that he had
understood the original demand to refer only to the well site nearest the
frontier. Faisal refused to accept the explanation: he had made it perfectly
clear, he told Zayid on 4 June, that the prohibition applied to all operations

below the 23rd parallel because they were taking place in Saudi territory. No
drilling had, in fact, taken place since 18 May: what Zayid was hoping to
achieve by these exchanges was simply a breathing space, to allow the Foreign
Office time in which to reach some firm decision. All that he received for his
comfort was a message from the Foreign Office on 15 June advising him not to
allow drilling to be resumed lest it rekindle Faisal’s anger. Zayid had little

option but to accept the advice for the time being; but ADPC kept its drilling
rig on the Zarrara site so as to demonstrate both its conviction of the validity of
his title to the area and its determination to stick by its own concessionary
rights.

Why did the Foreign Office hedge over Faisal’s ultimatum, especially as its
officials knew - or should have known - that it was an open challenge to
Britain’s treaty rights and obligations regarding the Trucial Shaikhdoms? The
answer is that the officials had by this time come round to the view that the
policy of withdrawal from the Gulf by the end of 1971 should be adhered to.
They had only just cleared the hurdle presented by the Persian claim to

Bahrain following the shah’s renunciation of the claim, and they blenched at
the thought of another long-drawn-out attempt to resolve the Saudi Arabian
frontier problem. The advent of the Conservative party to power in the June
election did not alter their conviction in the slightest. Whatever the Conserva­

tives might have in mind regarding the Gulf, the Foreign Office had formed its
own conclusions and did not intend to alter them.

What were the Conservatives’ views in June 1970, as compared with those they
had expressed while out of office? The Conservative election manifesto had
been forthright in its denunciation of the damage done to Britain s interests

abroad by the Labour government’s decision to withdraw from the Far ast
and the Gulf. ‘By unilaterally deciding to withdraw our forces from these areas
by the end of 1971’, so the manifesto proclaimed, ‘the Labour government
have broken their promises to the governments and peoples of these areas an

are exposing these British interests and the future of Britain s nen s