Page 333 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

LAND BOUNDARIES 269
Recognition of joint sovereignty by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia over
the Neutral Zone is clearly given in the Offshore Agreements of 1957
and 1958, in the following manner:
1. The preambles of both agreements provide that the agreements
in question arc concluded subject to the provisions of the Convention
of 2 December 1922 providing for sovereignty by Kuwait and Saudi
Arabia over equal shares in the Neutral Zone.
2. Article 4 of the Kuwait Agreement, dated 5 July 1958, provides
for equal sharing in the profits of the Zone in the following terms:
One half of all Petroleum produced within the Concession Area shall be
deemed to have been produced from the Shaikh’s undivided one half share
in the Petroleum resources in the said Area and one half shall be deemed
to have been produced from the undivided one half share therein belonging
to the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
3. Article 22 of the Kuwait agreement and Article 33 of the Saudi
Arabian agreement provide for police protection and guards for the
company, its employees, and its installations and property in the con­
cession area. Such police protection is, however, not provided con­
jointly by the Governments of both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
4. Article 29B of the Kuwait agreement and Article 50 of the Saudi
Arabian agreement provide for the hoisting of the flag of each respec­
tive country within the concessionary area.
5. Articles 24 and 25 of the Kuwait agreement and Article 56 of
the Saudi Arabian agreement provide that upon the termination of
the concessions all properties and installations within and without the
concession area shall be owned or bought jointly by Kuwait and Saudi
Arabia.
(b) The conclusion of treaties
There can be no real doubt that neither Kuwait nor Saudi Arabia
can unilaterally bind the Neutral Zone by individual treaty action,
though each State can of course conclude treaties which affect only
its own rights there.1 Treaties can apply to the Neutral Zone only with
the consent and agreement of both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The
ease of the Neutral Zone in this respect may be compared to that of
1 Practice has shown that treaties concluded by Saudi Arabia did not specifically
refer to the Neutral Zone. E.g., see the Treaty of Jiddah, 20 May 1927. (Aitchison,
p. 227.) As regards Kuwait, it may be interesting to ask whether the British Govern­
ment’s treaty of protection with Kuwait of 1899 applied to the Neutral Zone area
which owed its existence to an agreement concluded in 1922? In view of the pro­
visions of the Kuwait Orders in Council of 1925-59, which until 1961 applied to
Kuwait, it seems that the British Government had actually assumed the right of
protection over the area of the Neutral Zone in so far as this protection affected
the rights, properties and nationals of the Shaikh of Kuwait in the Zone. (See
Persian Gulf Gazette, suppl. no. 25, Aug. 1959.)