Page 340 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

276 Tin- LEGAL STATUS OF THE ARABIAN GULF STATES
contiguous to it, shall be entrusted to ‘a Joint Permanent Committee'
to be formed from ‘an equal number of representatives of the two
contracting Parties' (Arts. XVII-XVIII).
While agreeing that the present oil concessions in respect of both
the onshore and offshore areas of the Neutral Zone shall continue in
full force, the position with regard to ‘granting or amending any new
concession relating to shared natural resources’, in future, shall be
subject to joint consultation by the two competent Ministers of
Petroleum in both countries, who arc authorised to take, through the
medium of the ‘Joint Permanent Committee’ over which they preside,
the appropriate measures in all such matters (Arts. XV-XX).
It may be submitted that the emphasis in the provisions of this
agreement on the ‘equal rights’ of the contracting parties in the Neutral
Zone as a whole clearly indicates that the legal status of this territory
still continues, as in the past, to be based on the 1922 Convention; the
1965 Agreement has, it would seem, by no means affected the legal
status of this territory as a separate entity subject to the joint sovereignty
of both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, although the
agreement provides, under the provisions of Articles I and II, for the
annexation of one part of the Zone to Kuwait and the other to
Saudi Arabia, it is clear that the restrictions imposed by subsequent
provisions of the agreement on the exercise of the sovereign rights
attached to each section of the partitioned Zone have greatly
diminished the legal effects of such annexation.1 These restric­
tions are contained in Articles V and XXII of the agreement.
According to Article V, either party ‘shall be relieved of its ob­
ligations- under this Agreement’ in the case that the other party
‘cedes or otherwise alienates all or part of the said equal rights ...
which are exercised over any part of the partitioned Zone, to any
other State. . . .* Also Article XXII, which deals with questions
giving rise to arbitration and other related matters, states that ‘if
one of the parties refuses to abide by the judgment made against it,
the other party shall be relieved from its obligations under this
Agreement’. Consequently, should either of the contracting parties
act contrary to the provisions of these two articles, the other party
1 The arrangement made under the 1965 Agreement may be analogous to a
cession of territory, or a piece of shared territory. The legal form in which a cession
‘can be effected is an agreement embodied in a treaty between the ceding and the
acquiring State.’ (SeeOppenheim, p. 548.) But the arrangement in respect of the
Neutral Zone does not specifically fall within this concept, since ‘the object of
cession is sovereignty over such territory as has hitherto already belonged to
another State.’ (See Oppenheim, op. cit.) In the case of the Zone, the joint
sovereignty attached to the territory has not been completely relinquished in
respect of either part of the divided Zone. Therefore, it may be argued that what
has been ceded in the case of the partitioned Zone is ‘the exercise of sovereignty
rather than sovereignty itself.’ (See Oppenheim, p. 549, note 7, in reference to
certain cases of ‘leases’.)