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INNER OMAN AND ZUBARAII 243
actually affirmed and recognised the independent status assumed by
Oman in the past. According to The Times,
There appears to have been no definite denial of Omani independence in
the Treaty but a refusal to affirm it.1
The legal issue ensuing from this agreement seems to centre round
Article (4) of part one which assures the Omanis of non-interference
in ‘their internal affairs’. The representatives of the Imam contend
that the Sultan by granting in 1937 an oil concession in the territory
of Oman to a subsidiary of the Iraq Petroleum Company, without
consulting the Imam, has infringed the terms of the agreement.2 The
British Government and the Sultan reject this contention.3 The
treaty of Sib, the British Government argues,
was in no sense an international treaty but an agreement, of a kind familiar
in that area, between the sovereign and certain of his tribes, which did no
more than allow the Omani tribes a measure of autonomy.4
The question of which contention is correct cannot be discussed in
legal terms exclusively. It is true that if the terms of the treaty are
regarded as establishing objectively and absolutely binding commit­
ments between the two parties, then there is room for the view that a
violation of the agreement occurred when the Sultan interfered in the
internal affairs of Oman by denying the Omanis the right to control
their own oil resources. However, it is questionable whether the agree­
ment can be interpreted as creating legal commitment of this nature.
One reason is that it is not an international treaty, in the strict sense
of the term, since it was not concluded between two independent
international persons. It was, rather, as the British representative
pointed out in the United Nations, merely
an agreement, of a kind familiar in that area, between the sovereign and
certain of his tribes, which did no more than allow the Omani tribes a
measure of autonomy.
If the agreement is not a proper treaty and is not governed by
international law, then if it is to enjoy legal validity, it must be gov­
erned by some other system of law. If that system of law is the law of

1 The Times, 14 August 1957. And sec Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on
Oman, op. cit., p. 210.
2 The Times, 14 August 1957. And see Johnson, P., op. cit., p. 147.
3 The Times, op. cit.
4 See U.N.S.C., 12th Year, 783rd mtg, 20 August 1957, pp. 7-9. It is to be noted
that although the document is described as the Treaty of Sib’, it should not be
confused with real international instruments. It may be that a parallel with this
kind of ‘Treaty’ can be found in the ‘arrangements made by the Ottoman Sultans
and their Walis*. Sec A British Contributor, ‘Commentary on the Treaty of Sib’
Middle East Journal, 12 (1958), pp. 366-8.