Page 346 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

282 THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE ARABIAN GULF STATES
the territorial sea of the Kingdom is measured. Safeguards against
overlapping of the territorial sea of the Kingdom by ‘the waters of
another State’, are contained in Article 7 which states that in this case
‘boundaries will be determined by our Government in agreement with
that State in accordance with equitable principles’. This Article, which
applies to narrow seas like the Gulf of Aqaba,1 seems to comply with
Article 12 of the Convention on the Territorial Sea of 1958,2 which
provides that the extension of the territorial sea between the coasts of
two opposite or adjacent States is not valid, failing agreement to the
contrary, beyond the median line. At the head of the Arabian Gulf,
Iraq has also issued a decree, the Decree of 4 November 1958,3 in
which the territorial sea of Iraq has been fixed at twelve nautical miles
from the coast. With respect to the Iraqi Government’s right over the
continental shelf, the decree states that it ‘affects in no way the inter­
national right which Iraq holds over the two maritime zones called
the contiguous zone and the continental shelf situated beyond the
limits of the Iraqi territorial sea . . .*
It is clear from the above statements that while the Arab Shaikh-
doms have adopted, for the purpose of oil concessions, a breadth of
territorial sea which varies from three to six nautical miles, other
littoral States, such as Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, have made legis­
lation extending their territorial seas to a distance of twelve nautical
miles from their coasts. The question now arises, to what extent is
such unilateral legislation internationally binding vis-a-vis other
States? The territorial sea is defined as the ‘belt of water running
along the coast over which the coastal State exercises sovereignty,
subject to certain limitations imposed by international law’.4 As
regards the customary evolution of the three-mile limit rule, M. W.
Mouton states:
A certain rule has developed from vague principles, that a State has sove-
reignty rights in the adjacent sea to a distance of at least three miles from
low water mark. Also a rather dominant State practice has evolved to the
effect that the territorial waters belong to the territory of the littoral State.8

1 See Young, R., ‘Saudi Arabian Offshore Legislation’, A.J.I.L., 43 (1949),
^ 3 Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone, 27 April 1958,
A/CONF. 13/L. 52. And see The Society of Comparative Legislation and Inter­
national Law, London, The Law of the Sea: The Final Act and Annexes of the
United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, Geneva, 1958, pp. 4-11.
3 Quotations from the Iraqi decree are provided in Auguste, B. B. L., The Con­
tinental Shelf: The Practice and Policy of the Latin American States, etc. (I96UJ,
^ *Dcan, A. H., ‘The Geneva Conference on the Law of the Sea: What was
Accomplished?’, A.J.I.L52 (1958), p. 610.
b Mouton, M. W., The Continental Shelf p. 215.