Page 242 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

180 THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE ARABIAN GULF STATES
of the defeated Stale ‘through military force’, and annexes it, it
becomes the new sovereign of the conquered territory. The

subjugated territory [says Oppenheim], has not for one moment been no
State s land, but passes from the enemy to the conqueror not through
cession but through annexation.1 b

In support of her contention that she has not lost her sovereignty
over Bahrain either as a result of the "Utubi conquest in 1783, or by
the assertion of the independence of Bahrain in the following years,
Persia introduced in a Note, dated 2 August 1928, an alleged principle
of international law which reads:

A territory belonging to a sovereign State cannot be lawfully detached
so long as the right of ownership has not been transferred by this State to
another State in virtue of an official act, in this case a treaty, or so long as
its annexation by another State or its independence have not been officially
recognised by the lawful owner of the territory.2

In his reply, dated 18 February 1929, to the above Note, Sir Austen
Chamberlain denied

that any such principle, if alleged to be of universal application, forms
part of international law. The assertion [he said] that the consent of the
dispossessed State is invariably required to validate a change of sove­
reignty is contradicted both by international practice and the facts of history.
Moreover, it would, if it existed, seriously prejudice the maintenance of
peace and international order.3
What are the merits of the Persian argument?4 The assertion that
conquest does not operate as a means of loss of territory without the
conclusion of a treaty of cession (which formally transfers the sub­
jugated territory from the possession of the conquered State to that
of the conqueror), as implied in the Persian argument, seems repugnant

1 Oppenheim, pp. 566-7, 568; See also Hill, op. cit., p. 161.
} 2 L.N.O.J., September 1928, p. 1360.
3 L.N.O./., May 1929, p. 791.
4 It appears that the Persian argument is based on a report submitted in 1925
to the League of Nations, by a Commission of three persons (the Wirscn Commis­
sion) which was appointed by the Assembly of the League of Nations in September
1924 for the purpose of collecting facts and data regarding the dispute between
Turkey and Iraq over the ‘Mosul District’. This district, which was at the time
occupied by British and Iraqi troops, was claimed by Turkey as part of her terri­
tories. On the legal side of the Iraqi-Turkish dispute, the Commissioners stated
that Turkey ‘retains her legal sovereignty over the disputed territory so long as she
does not renounce her rights’. Iraq has no legal rights or right of conquest over that
territory. ‘The territory’, the Commissioners continued, ‘... still belongs in law to
Turkey until she renounces her rights.’ See League of Nations, C. 400, n. 147, 1925,
VII, pp. 84-5. For a general discussion of the League’s Assembly on the merits of
this report, sec L.N.<2./., vol. 11 (1925), pp. 1307 et seq.