Page 342 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

17

Disputes over the determination of submarine
boundaries in the Arabian Gulf

The practice of the littoral Arab States of the Gulf: The Saudi Royal
Pronouncement and the Proclamations of the Shaikluloms respecting
their offshore boundaries, 1949
Following President Truman’s Proclamation of 1945,1 each of Saudi
Arabia and the nine Arab Shaikhdoms abutting on the Arabian Gulf
issued proclamations in which they individually defined their future
policies respecting the natural resources of the sea-bed and sub-soil
of the offshore areas contiguous to their coasts. Saudi Arabia was the
first Arab Kingdom which by the Royal Pronouncement of 28 May
19492 claimed that the sea-bed and sub-soil areas of the Gulf con­
tiguous to her coasts are ‘subject to her jurisdiction and control’.
The boundaries of such areas, the Pronouncement continued, ‘will be
determined, in accordance with equitable principles, by our Govern­
ment in agreement with other states having jurisdiction and control
over the sub-soil and sea-bed of adjoining areas’.3 Soon after the Saudi
Pronouncement each of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and six Shaikhdoms
of the Trucial Coast issued proclamations in which they asserted their
rights to the offshore areas contiguous to the coasts of thejr territories.
These proclamations were all issued in June 1949,4 in the following
chronological order: Bahrain, 5 June; Qatar, 8 June; Abu Dhabi,
10 June; Kuwait, 12 June; Dubai, 14 June; Sharjah, 16 June; Ras
al-Khaimah, 17 June; Ajman, 20 June; and Umm al-Qaiwain, June
(no definite date).
1 For United States’ Proclamation of 28 September 1945, see U.N.L.S., 1951,
p. 39. In this Proclamation the United States Government declared that ‘the natural
resources of the subsoil and seabed of the continental shelf beneath the high seas
but contiguous to the coasts of the United States’ were to be considered as
‘appertaining to the United States and subject to her jurisdiction and control’.
For a legal analysis of the subject, see Young, R., ‘The Legal Status of Submarine
Areas Beneath the High Seas’, A.J.J.L., 45 (1951), p. 225.
* For the English text of the Pronouncement of 28 May 1949, see A.J.I.L.,
Suppl.,43 (1949), p. 154. For a useful commentary on the Saudi Pronouncement,
see Young, R., ‘Saudi Arabian Offshore Legislation’, A.J.I.L., 43 (1949), p. 530.
There the writer points out that unlike the United States’ Proclamation, the Saudi
Pronouncement declares ‘the seabed and subsoil (and not merely the resources
therein)* to be subject to Saudi Arabian jurisdiction and control. See n. 1 above.
4 For the English texts of the Proclamations of the Arabian Gulf Shaikhdoms,
see U.N.L.S., High Seas, vol. I (1951), pp. 22-30.
278