Page 89 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

86 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

performance. It knew full well that Saudi Arabia had not a shred of right, legal
historical or otherwise, to the territory it was claiming. The Foreign Office also
knew, however, that it possessed no real influence with the Saudi government
to persuade it to modify its claim. The issue at stake resolved itself, therefore
in the Foreign Office’s eyes into one of inducing or compelling Abu Dhabi to
concede the Saudi claim, if not in its entirety, at least to an extent that would

satisfy the Saudis. That the British government had time and again solemnly
affirmed the Riyad Line as the true frontier of Abu Dhabi seemed to trouble
the Foreign Office little. Nor did it appear to feel itself constrained by the fact
that the treaty of 1892, which provided the legal justification for Britain’s
intervention in the frontier dispute, also bound the ruler of Abu Dhabi not to

alienate any portion of his territory except to the British government. Instead
of interpreting this clause in the treaty as interposing a legal barrier to prevent
it from doing what it was attempting to do, the Foreign Office sought in effect
to prove, as an implicit corollary to this undertaking, that the ruler was also
required to cede territory to another state at the behest of the British govern­

ment. If any implicit corollary resided in the non-alienation clause of the
treaty, however, it was that the shaikh was under no requirement whatever to
cede any part of his territory to another state, even if urged to do so by the
British government.
None of these considerations counted for anything in the eyes of the Foreign

Office, which proceeded at the outset of 1971 to bring renewed pressure to bear
upon Zayid to induce him to yield to Faisal’s demands. All the discreditable
arguments which had been employed in the 1930s to justify the appeasement of
Ibn Saud’s expansionist ambitions were dredged up and used again. Faisal, the
Foreign Office insisted, had made concessions by retreating from his earlier
immoderate claims: Zayid must reciprocate. If he did not reach an accommo­

dation with Faisal now, while he still enjoyed the ‘good offices’ ot the British
government, by relinquishing a reasonable portion of his shaikhdom, he would
be forced after Britain’s withdrawal from the Gulf to agree to a far less
favourable settlement and to surrender a much larger slice of territory than was

at present being demanded. When the obvious objection was raised that the
Saudis might well, as they had in the past, use any concession as an excuse for
further demands, and, furthermore, that there was no guarantee but rather the
opposite, to judge from their past conduct, that the Saudis would continue to
respect any agreement on the frontier once the British were gone, the Foreign
Office brusquely replied that Zayid had no choice but to trust Faisal to keep is

word. If he failed to satisfy Faisal’s demands and to conclude a settlement wi
him before the end of 1971, he would have to face the Saudi ruler on his own
afterwards. In this event, he would be able to count himself fortunate 1 ie was

left with a sand-dune to call his own. . ,
Such being the Foreign Office’s attitude, it was obviously m Zayid s imcr
to provoke a crisis with the Saudis before the British left the u an