Page 220 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

158 THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE ARABIAN GULF STATES

authority. Accordingly, the Omani question is fundamentally a dispute
between the Imam of the ‘hinterland of Oman’, who claims inde­
pendence or ‘internal autonomy’ from the Sultan of Muscat, on the
one hand, and both the Sultan and the British Government, on the
other. In this dispute which has been on the agenda of the General
Assembly for the last eight years or so, the British Government has
always espoused the position of the Sultan of Muscat and Oman
which is to the effect that the Omani complaint is a domestic matter
over which the United Nations has no jurisdiction.1 The United
Nations, however, has, despite British objection, continued its
consideration of this dispute. The history and developments of the
dispute in the United Nations will now be discussed.
The question of Oman was first introduced in the United Nations in
August 1957, when representatives of eleven Arab States requested,
under Article 35 of the Charter, the convening of the Security Council
to consider
the armed aggression by the United Kingdom . . . against the indepen­
dence, sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the Imamate of Oman . . .a
This motion failed to be placed on the agenda. However, in September
1960 ten Arab States requested that the ‘question of Oman’ be placed
on the agenda of the General Assembly’s fifteenth Session. In their
request, the Arab countries submitted that the ‘Imamate of Oman’,
described as the hinterland of what is erroneously called the Sultanate
of Muscat and Oman, had been invaded by British-led forces, and its
capital occupied in December 1955. The question was allocated to the
Special Political Committee and was considered by that Committee.3
At the sixteenth session of the General Assembly, the Omani Repre­
sentative, who was granted hearing by the Special Political Committee,
stated that Oman ‘had enjoyed freedom and independence for cen­
turies and that the treaty of Sib of 1920 had confirmed that inde­
pendence’.4 The British representative, who spoke in favour of the
Sultan of Muscat, maintained that the Sultan’s sovereignty and in­
dependence over Muscat and Oman has been recognised in interna­
tional treaties. As regards British military assistance to the Sultan, the
British representative said that it was rendered at the request of the
Sultan to help him suppress ‘the rebellion of certain Shaikhs in 1954—
55’. This object, he continued, was achieved in 1959, when the rebel­
lion was put down and thus ‘the area had since been at peace’. Furthcr-

1 For similar objections to United Nations discussion of disputes between
protected and protecting States, see above, p. 157.
V 2 See Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Oman (U.N.G.A., A/5846), 22 January
1965, p. 31. ^ „
'n 3 Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Oman, op. cit., p. 32.
* Ibid., p. 33; Y.U.N., 1961, pp. 149-50.