Page 294 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

232 THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE ARABIAN GULF STATES
1955, to suggest that the Saudi Government has ever recognised,
directly or indirectly, the Anglo-Turkish Conventions of 1913 and
1914, as a basis for settling the dispute in respect of its common
frontiers with the Trucial Coast Shaikhdoms.1 Moreover, it is con-
tended that by Article T of the Treaty of 26 December 1915 between
Britain and Saudi Arabia, the former recognised Ibn Sa'ud’s sover-
eignty over the territories of ‘Najd, Al-Hasa, Qatif and JubaiP which
territories were, according to this article, not defined, but ‘will be
discussed and determined hereafter’.2 Surely, it is asked, if in view of
the British Government the above-mentioned territories of Ibn Sarud
were previously defined by cither the Convention of 1913 or by the
subsequent Convention of 1914, a clear and an express reference to
these conventions should have been made in the Anglo-Saudi Treaty
of 1915. On the contrary, it is apparent that this treaty expressly con­
firmed that the territories to which Ibn Sa'ud succeeded had no
previously defined boundaries.3 It may also be assumed that Ibn Sa'ud
had no foreknowledge of the 1913-14 Conventions since they were not
published officially by the British Government.4 However, mention
should be made of the fact that a brief reference to the ‘Blue Line'
of the unratified Convention of 1913 was made in thefUqair Agree­
ment between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, dated 2 December 1922.5
But the Saudi Government contends that a reference to the 1913
boundary line ‘was included (in the 1922 agreement) in order to
simplify the geographical description; but there was no suggestion
that the 1913 Convention or any part of it was binding'.6

The question of acknowledgement by Saudi Arabia of Turkish suzerainty
It appears that the United Kingdom has taken the view that Saudi
Arabia was bound by the Anglo-Turkish Conventions of 1913 and
1914 not only on the ground that she succeeded to former Turkish
territories in Arabia, but also on the ground that she acknowledged
Turkish suzerainty, or protection, by virtue of a treaty concluded

1 See Saudi Memorial, I, Part V.
2 Ibid., p. 399.
3 Ibid. Note that British interpretation of the 1915 treaty varies from that of the
Saudis. From the British viewpoint, the 1915 treaty ‘constituted a formal recognition
by Ibn Sa'ud of the fact that Saudi territory in eastern Arabia extended almost to
the furthest limits of Nadj and Hasa’. Accordingly, Ibn Sa’ud ‘recognised the
territorial situation upon the basis of which the Blue Line had been delimited in
the Anglo-Turkish Conventions of 1913 and 1914’. See British Memorial, I, p. 125.
4 The Anglo-Turkish Conventions were published neither in the official British
Treaty Series nor in the publications of the British and Foreign State Papers.
According to Philby, ‘the British Government put away these instruments, which

p. 630.
6 See Appendix VIII, c Saudi Memorial, I, p. 401,